We were the less successful, rural side of the family. My mom called them “barf letters”.

Mallory Ortbergs is my shiiiiiit.

LipSmackers: snacks for those years when you think that lunch=yogurt plus apple. Anyone else happy to be an adult?

So is Wet ‘n Wild still in existence, or maybe that’s more like pre-teen and up stuff? I would also totally just eat those soda-flavored LipSmackers. Like eating paste, for high school...

Ba ha ha ha...thanks, that helps. If you’re not already familiar with Mallory Ortberg’s art history...interpretations, you might check them:

It was a seed stitch-K1 P1 etc. for row one then P1 K1 for the next row, for boxes of I think 10 rows each, then you reverse the pattern to start the next row. I am not very experienced and it was not hard. I think I got the pattern in a pattern packet from Morehouse Merino but it didn’t amount to anything more…

Even better is when it takes you 40+ hours, and the person whose kid you made it for doesn’t even say thanks, and throws it in a pile in the corner and scowls without saying a word. Asked the same person sometime later about good presents to give to expectant parents, and she explicitly said that baby blankets were…

There are YouTube videos for that if you don’t know anyone who can show you. Srsly it isn’t hard. But it takes a long time to make anything of any size...

OMG no joke. I made a full-sized knit blanket when I was younger and it took foreeeever, at 1-3 hours a day. I was like dawg, I got to learn to crochet...

Knitters: what the heck size needles are they using to make blankets like that?? Traffic cones?

There is probably a lot more dysfunction going on here than the mom is admitting to herself-I think a weekly check-in with immediate family is reasonable, but if your kid chafes at closeness, ask yourself if you were maybe nastier to them than you thought you were being, or if you maybe didn’t grant them the degree of…

IDK why but I loved Pizza Hut when I was a teen. Really can’t take the pre-deep-fried pizzas with extra-fat mozzarella now that I have passed the age of infinite metabolic activity, and am now limited to (too bad, so sad) making it myself or going to places where they know of pizza. Like Italy...

Pinkham is now at Wonkette:

Tax-exempt!

Go to Ag school and study cheese (and wine).

ProBirdRights 4lyfe!

I KNOW. Beachbody, Arbonne, some kind of fingernail wraps (?), I’m waiting for Amway to make a comeback. Can we get some real jobs in America, plz?

oh shit new office poster.

May I recommend an antidote:

Ok Ted Cruz is a repellant mouth-farter, but who amongst us would elect our previous roommates for anything? Why ask people who are on the cusp of adulthood to live in the same room? Why not, you know, individual cells, where people can be unsavory in peace? Ugh, roommates.