Her four best jokes

Venus is at that brilliant age (five and a bit) where she finds lame jokes hysterically funny, and she seems to be able to remember a lot of them.

She told me her four best jokes. I know they are her four best jokes, because they were preceded by:

"Mummy, would you like to hear my four best jokes?"

"Yes please."

"Why did the cow cross the road?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because it wanted to go to the mooovies." 

We both laugh. 

"Why did the cow cross the road again?"

"I don't know. Why did the cow cross the road again?"

"Because it wanted to go to the mooon."

We laugh again. Then we start in on the knock knock jokes.

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Mr Potato."

"Mr Potato who?" I ask cautiously, because I can't quite see where this one is going.

"Mr Potato Policeman."

"Oh" I say, smiling. "Very funny."

"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Two potatoes."

"Two potatoes who?"

"Mummy potato, Daddy potato and Baby potato." She is already laughing, but my brow is furrowed with confusion. So I say:

"But that's three potatoes!" and then she says:

"That's the whole point of the joke!" and we laugh and laugh.

What's great about this last joke is firstly that she knows it's ridiculous and that's why it's funny, and secondly she made it up all by herself.

I've only ever written one really funny joke.

Why does all country music sound the same?

Because you can only play two notes on a jug.

Junior Masterchef

Our kids don't watch a lot of television, and neither do we, really. But I've been wanting to check out Masterchef for a while, not having ever watched it before.

Several weeks ago I saw that a new series of Junior Masterchef was about to start, and I thought this might be a great way to get the kids watching something new and interesting, and I'd watch with them.

We recorded the first two episodes which screened on a Sunday night and the following Monday night, and then one day on the school holidays we sat down to watch them.

After ten minutes, Mars asked me when he could start to learn to cook. I told him he could start straight away.

That night he made his favourite food, tuna noodle casserole from his Nana's recipe, with small amounts of help from me where boiling water and the hot oven were involved.

He was completely inspired by the show, which is fantastic. Now he wants to help in the kitchen all the time, which I love. He's been pouring over the Junior Masterchef website for recipes. He wants to make the most difficult hazelnut meringue cake I've ever seen, and I've never even made meringues!

I, on the other hand, have been completely awed by what children only a little older than Mars can produce. The most amazing desserts, unbelievable pasta dishes. These kids are making food that I've never even attempted, with little or no help.

I feel like a complete dolt in the kitchen now.

I can only hope that one day soon, when Mars surpasses my level of cooking talent, that he will let me help him in the kitchen, and I might pick up a few skills from him.

Zucchini meanie

A little while ago I was putting Venus to bed when she started telling me about the zucchini meanie.

Apparently her Pooh Bear wears a bodysuit to bed, just like Bumblebee, and this bodysuit is covered in pictures of animals.

She pointed to a random spot on this invisible bodysuit and told me "this is a zucchini meanie."

"Oh," I said. "What's a zucchini meanie?"

"Well, it's a lot like a giraffe, but its neck is this long (she indicated about 20cm with her hands) and its legs are this long (about the same length), and its nose is this long, as big as my hand, and its eyes are this big (about the size of a tennis ball)."

"What colour is a zucchini meanie?"

"Red. Well, the spots are red. The rest is brown because it's very dangerous so it hides in caves and gets dirty. It used to be a normal giraffe but some people treated it special, so now it's a super giraffe."

"What do you mean when you say people treated it special?"

"They gave it special food."

"Oh. What does a zucchini meanie eat?"

"Frogs... but not all frogs. Kileanie frogs."

"Kileanie frogs?"

"Yes. They're called kileanie frogs because they always lean on things."

Looks like she's been reading Dr Seuss behind my back.

Stars and chickens

I have long been remiss in not mentioning the Star family. We have known them for many years and they are very dear to us.

Mrs Star is actually Dr Star, and Mr Star is from Brazil. In addition to being Venus' Godparents, they have three gorgeous girls of their own. Jellybean will be eight soon and is at school with Mars. She is lithe, loves gymnastics and excells at it.  Miss Mouse is five, two months older than Venus, and is by far the biggest rascal of the three. Then there's little Pumpkin. She is two years old, beautiful of face and beautiful by nature.

A few months ago the Star family got some chickens. Three were hens, but one, Pecky, turned out to be slightly more of a rooster than they would have liked, so he went back. He was replaced by a lovely hen, who also turned out to be a rooster, who also went back. So currently the numbers stand at three hens.

Their names are Brownie, Dirty and Skinny.

Last week they started to lay eggs, and Jellybean took one to school on Monday for Show and Tell. Venus and I dropped Mars off at school, and on the way back to the car this happened.

"Mummy, why did Jellybean bring an egg to school for Show and Tell?"

"Because their chickens have just started laying eggs and it's very exciting."

"But what happens if the egg gets broken while it's at school?"

"It probably won't get broken. I'm sure Jellybean will be very careful with it. And besides, I'm pretty sure Papai* was going to eat the eggs anyway."

Venus was horrified.

"But Mummy, you can't eat those. They're chicken eggs!"

"But you saw me eat two eggs for breakfast yesterday."

"But they're meant to grow into chickens!"

"Oh, no. These are just eggs for eating, it's okay. If you want to grow baby chickens you need a rooster."

"Oh. Why do you need a rooster?"

"The rooster does something special to make the egg grow into a baby chicken."

"What does the rooster do?"

Now this is the point in my conversations with my children where I usually say too much. So I tried to be sensible in my response, without wanting to crush Venus' thirst for knowledge by flatly refusing to answer the question.

"Honey, that's a bit of a grown up story. Can I tell you that story when you're a bit bigger?"

"Okay Mummy."

I don't think her brother would have let me get away with that.

*Papai is Portugese for Daddy, and it's how the girls refer to their father. Venus worked this out when she was very small, and she also started to call him Papai, and still does. He just loves it. 

Heather's hat

Heather simply despises her haircut.

At least, that's what her facebook status said many months ago. A hairdresser inflicted an unflattering bob on my friend, and she was not happy. So I did what any knitter would do. I offered to make her a hat.

That was before winter. It is now spring, but the hat is finished. Well... almost finished.

We agreed on a felted grey cloche. The first wool I bought had been treated to survive the washing machine, so it was resistant to felting. I thought if I was really harsh with it I could probably still get it to felt, but I tested a small piece and it failed. So I had to go back for more wool. It's a darker shade of grey than I would have liked, but I didn't have much choice.

The wool joined the queue of projects I had lined up at the time. Several bee hats jumped ahead of Heather's hat in the queue, so that delayed things by about a month. 

When I finally got the wool, the correct needles and the pattern all assembled in my knitting bag the actual knitting, after some initial hiccups because of mistakes in the pattern, went smoothly and was very enjoyable.

Generally items destined for felting are knit loosely on bigger needles that you would normally use, so that when the fabric shrinks in the felting process you end up with an item that is roughly the right size. You can't tell from this picture, but this sucker looked massive, on and off the needles.

The felting process involves taking your knitting and torturing it. You get a bucket of cold water and a bucket of hot soapy water and you repeatedly plunge and scrub the knitting in the hot water, and then every so often dunk it in the cold bucket. The heat, soap and friction make the wool fibres relax and then bond together, which is what turns something from knitting into felt. The cold water shocks the fibres and their bonds become stronger.

After about thirty five minutes of scrubbing it was clear that the felting was going well but it didn't seem like the hat had shrunk much. I squeezed out a lot of the water and tried the hat on and it was still miles too big. So I gave it another fifteen minutes and it was just right. You can see it standing up all by itself because the felt is nice and thick. 

All that remained was to fit the hat to my sophisticated drying apparatus, painstakingly crafted from a vase and a balloon blown up to head size, and wait a day or two for the hat to competely dry out. 

So that's what I did yesterday. I'm really pleased with the end result. Let us hope that Heather likes it too, and that she never looks at it and sees what I can see: a vague resemblance to Darth Vader's helmet.

Oh, and if you're wondering what happened to the first lot of gray wool that I bought, I made Heather some wristwarmers.

If Darth Vader had been given handknitted wristwarmers he might not have turned out so evil.

Wrong number

Supernerd and I have lived in five houses together. One house we lived in had the old phone number of a dojo somewhere, so we used to get the occasional confused person trying to book in for a class or find out our opening hours. That was entertaining.

Another place we lived had a number very similar to a nearby restaurant. At odd hours of the day and night we'd get phone calls for them too.

A few weeks ago I got a call from a woman who clearly thought she'd rung someone else. When I picked up the phone and said "Hello, Alison speaking" she wasn't listening.

There was a lot of background noise on her end, it sounded like a few kids yelling at each other, so I waited. Then she put the phone to her ear.

She said "Hi, I want to order some pizzas for delivery" with the rising tone at the end that suggested she was asking a question, even though it wasn't a question.

Now sometimes, in the moments between seconds, wicked little thoughts flash through my brain. I had one of those moments.

A tiny little voice in my brain said "Oh go on, take her order."

My rational voice said "No, no! Wrong number. Tell her she's called the wrong number."

"Take her order. She'll never know."

"But it's a wrong number!"

"But don't you want to know what she wants? How many pizzas? I bet it's a lot. Sounds like she's got a few kids there."

"But I'm not the pizza shop!"

"Go on! She'll never know it was you!"

I opened my mouth as she started to give me her order and said "Hold on, I'm going to stop you there. I'm really sorry but I'm not the pizza shop. You've called the wrong number."

She said "Oh, thanks." 

I laughed and said "I mean, I can take your order if you like, but you'll probably never get your dinner."

She laughed, said thanks again and hung up.

All this left me wondering what on earth is wrong with my brain? For a fraction of a second I was seriously tempted to take this poor woman's pizza order and just leave her hanging. But if I had I just don't think I could live with the guilt of having done it. I'm not good with guilt.

Mind you, if she ever calls back when I've had a few drinks... she'll never see that pizza.

Mixed up words

I love the wonderful ways in which little kids can get their words mixed up.

For a long time Venus would say wetting instead of wedding. The words "Mummy, how many days until Libby and George's wetting?" uttered many many times leading up to the actual event, turned out to be somewhat prophetic as it poured rain for most of that day and the ceremony had to be held indoors rather than out in the garden as originally planned.

At the moment she keeps calling her dressing gown her dressing down. It makes me giggle every time.

Once we were in the fruit and vegetable section in the supermarket and she asked me whether we needed to buy georginas. It turned out she meant aubergines. We didn't.

We were on the bus tour at a wildlife safari park earlier in the year. We stopped in the enclosure where the bison live. Venus stood up in her chair, pointed at the bison and yelled "Look Mummy, hacks! Hacks Mummy, hacks!" It sounded like she was being awfully insulting, but she thought they were yaks.

Recently Ms Awesome jokingly threatened to feed my children ox tongue when they were misbehaving at her house. Venus told me later that Ms Awesome wanted to make them eat fox tongue.

But my all time favourite so far is this:

"Mummy, when are you going to do your ogres again?"

"Ogres?"

"Yes, your ogres. You haven't done your ogres for a long time."

"I don't know what you're talking about. What are my ogres?"

"Your ogres are your exercises Mummy, on the Wii."

"Do you mean yoga?"

"Oh, yes. Yoga."

Family tree

Sometimes Mars amazes me with his complete lack of consideration for others, but at other times he really impresses me with his thoughtfulness and kindness.

He brought home from school a drawing of a family tree which featured ovals labelled "Me", "Mum", "Dad", "Mum's Mum" and so on. We had a week to print some pictures of the family, glue them on and send it back to school.

But there was a problem.

As soon as Mars looked at this family tree, he noticed something. Something very important. Something was missing.

There was no space on the tree for Venus, and it really bothered him.

It bothered him so much that he insisted that we add her. So while Supernerd was downstairs painstakingly printing portraits at just the right size, I took out my black pens and went to work. 

It's a fairly dodgy effort, but I was pretty pleased with the result. I showed it to Mars, and I think he was almost as impressed with me as I was with him for insisting that his sister be added to his family tree.

I don't think every brother would do that for his little sister, but I sure am glad that Mars did.

Oh bugger

Not long ago Mars was settling in for some screen time with Supernerd's old laptop. He arranged the computer and a large cushion on the loungeroom floor, lay down, got comfortable and switched the computer on.

Then I heard an old-man groan issue from his lips as he realised he'd forgotten something and he was going to have to get up again.

I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he'd forgotten to grab the mouse and plug it in. As the laptop comes equipped with a trackpad and buttons, I asked him whether he was doing something that particularly needed a mouse, or if he just preferred to use the mouse instead of the trackpad.

He pointed to the left mouse button on the laptop, which has been dodgy for a long time, and said "No, it's just that that mouse button is buggered....I mean stuffed! Sorry Mum, I meant to say stuffed!"

"Did you just say 'buggered'?"

"Yes, but I didn't mean it!"

It seemed like a genuine accident, so I didn't give him a hard time. I just reinforced that it's really not a nice word for a child to use, and that I shouldn't use it either.


Less than a week later...


I was trudging up the street to visit Ms Awesome, and as I made my way through their front yard I found myself shooing the local wandering dog. Let's call him Fozzie. 


Fozzie lives around the corner from Ms Awesome and Captain Spreadsheet, and his humans let him wander the streets leaving deposits on the neighbours' lawns. They don't think it's anything to worry about, but Ms Awesome has had enough of finding barker's eggs in her front yard. So the X-Man has learned to shout at the dog "Go home Fozzie!" from the front porch whenever he sees the dog in their yard.


So I was loudly telling this dog to go home, and just as I drew level with the front door the X-Man flung the door open and screamed at the top of his lungs:


"Bugger off Fozzie!"


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I've taught the neighbours' child a wonderful new word, but it wasn't me. 


I got inside to discover his mother with her head in her hands, because all he'd done was repeat what she'd said.


She sat on the naughty mat while X-Man's father explained to him that that word is not a nice word for children to use, and Mummy really shouldn't use it either. Even to dogs.


Oh bugger.

Lemon meringue pie

Long ago I made a lemon meringue pie to share with friends, and it was a bit of a disaster. I think I burned the pastry, but the filling and the meringue were both okay.

I was determined to try again. I distinctly remember saying "I'm going to keep making lemon meringue pie every week until I get it right."

So the following week when I tried again the filling was so runny that as we drove to our friends' house it was flowing out of the pie from underneath the meringue.

I was grumpy about how I'd screwed it up, but at least I hadn't made the same mistake twice. To my friends' credit, they still ate the pie.

For the third week in a row, I baked the same lemon meringue pie. This time I burnt the pastry and the meringue.

They still ate the pie, and I gave up.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday I needed to bake a lemon meringue pie for a dinner party, and because of my history with this pie I made sure I gave myself plenty of time so I wouldn't be rushing and make a silly mistake.

I made the pastry from scratch. It was kind of lumpy but it seemed okay. I baked it and it shrank and looked kind of ugly. Not at all like the picture in the cookbook.

I made the filling. It was thick and gooey and yellow. It looked exactly like the picture in the cookbook.

I made the meringue. It was glossy and beautiful, but was way too soft and wouldn't make nice peaks. It looked kind of like the picture in the cookbook.

It went in the oven and when it came out it was kind of disappointing, but it wasn't bad.

It wasn't bad, until I put it in the car and drove ten minutes to where I needed to go.

When I got there I realised that the pie had leaked sticky fluid around the inside of the container it was in, and down the side of the wicker basket it was sitting on inside the car.

I said rude words to it and jammed it in the fridge, and when the time came to serve it the pastry was soft and didn't hold its shape, and the meringue collapsed around the sides. It tasted fine, but I was not happy.

I was even less happy when at the end of the night I went out to the car and found a sticky lemony mess all over the passenger seat behind and under where the wicker basket had been.

So what have I learned? I think I need a new recipe, and if I ever put a lemon meringue pie in the car again, it's going to be in something that absolutely won't leak.

Bloody lemon meringue pie.

Soup

Quiche Thursday took an interesting turn several weeks ago when Ms Awesome suggested I not make a quiche, because she was making soup the day before and would have enough for lunch on Thursday.

So I didn't make a quiche, and Ms Awesome made a beautiful pumpkin and vegie soup with risoni. 

When I got to her place I was in the next room playing with X-Man and I heard the fridge open and Ms Awesome shout.

When I got to the kitchen she was standing in front of the fridge with the door open and there was orange stuff all over the floor.

I said the only thing I could think of.

I said "please tell me that's the soup".

She laughed for a long time, and we cleaned up the mess on the floor. Then we opened the fridge and saw the soup all over the inside of the fridge, and we laughed some more.

So we cleaned that up as well and had leftover sausage rolls for lunch, and that was how Soup Thursday was born.

Since then there have been two Soup Thursdays, and I am delighted to report that on neither occasion has the soup resembled vomit. 

Last week Ms Awesome made a wonderful chicken soup with home made stock, and mine still had some bones in it.

We laughed about that too.

Grammar ninja

The misuse of punctuation irks me, and I am usually able to restrain myself from explaining to people that they are idiots, getting out a big black texta to fix things, or sending notices back to school with corrections marked in red pen.

But yesterday I saw something that I just couldn't let pass.

Supernerd and I were on our way to a local cafe for breakfast when we walked past another cafe with an A-frame blackboard outside, advertising the inclusion of tapas on their menu.

The trouble was, they'd written tapa's. Every single time. Three times on each side of the blackboard.

I saw it as we walked towards it, inwardly groaned, and was almost about to walk past it and keep going when I realised three important things.

Firstly, it was just chalk on a blackboard, so it was going to be really easy to fix.

Secondly, there was nobody sitting outside the cafe, so nobody but Supernerd would witness what I was about to do.

And thirdly, if I didn't fix it then every other person walking down that street would see the word tapa's and think that it was correct, and I just couldn't let that happen.

So I pulled on my grammar ninja outfit, crouched down and rubbed every single apostrophe off that blackboard with my finger. Then I went around to the other side and did it again.

Supernerd, always supportive, tried to get a picture of me in the act, but I was too fast.

Because that's what a grammar ninja does. 

We right grammatical wrongs and then vanish into the night. Or the cafe up the street. Either works for me.

Quiche Thursday

Sometimes things just work out. That's how Quiche Thursday started.

Captain Spreadsheet is allergic to eggs. He wasn't always allergic to them, but it makes him sad that now when he goes out for breakfast he has to order bacon and eggs without the eggs.

That means that Ms Awesome never makes quiche, because if she did she would be the only one in her house eating it. 

So I made her a quiche and she made a salad and we had lunch together one day at her house, and it was lovely.

But then it got better, because Ms Awesome mentioned the quiche to Mrs Z, who also loves quiche and never makes it because Mr Z doesn't like eggs.

So the Thursday after that became Quiche Thursday. That was about five or six weeks ago, and most Thursdays have been Quiche Thursday since then. It's a brilliant arrangement. I make the quiche, someone makes a salad and someone else makes a dessert. Our kids all play together and we get to catch up over quiche and cake.

If you have a need to eat quiche but nobody to eat it with, my advice is to find someone with an egg-intolerant spouse. So that you may find your own Quiche Thursday, I give you the easiest and quiche recipe ever.

4 eggs

1 chopped onion

375ml milk

250g chopped ham or bacon

1 cup grated tasty cheese

1/2 cup self-raising flour

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 200c if fan-forced or 220c if not fan-forced. Place all the ingredients in a big bowl and mix until well combined. Pour into a greased quiche dish or baking dish and bake for 40 minutes.

You can add lots of different ingredients to this basic recipe. Swap the ham for smoked salmon, add corn, mushrooms, or capsicum if you like. You can also thinly slice a tomato and lay the slices on top of the quiche before you bake it, to make it look pretty. I like to add herbs from my little herb garden. Fresh basil is wonderful in this quiche.


Enjoy!

Neighbours

We moved house about two and a half years ago, to where we live now. As the crow flies we only moved 1.1 kilometres, but that was far enough to get away from some of the neighbours, of whom we weren't so fond.

On one side we had a lovely family, Mum, Dad and two daughters, one of whom moved out during the time we lived there. On the other side, an elderly couple who both eventually passed away, and their house was sold to some people who knocked it down, commenced work on a two-storey monster with a massive concrete fence at the front, and who would eventually lie to us and buy our house so that they can one day demolish it. Having built their fugly house on almost every square inch of their block, and then jamming a pool in the only bit of space there was left for their children to run around in, I guess they felt they needed our block as their back yard.

Across the road and down a bit was the single mum with the troubled teenager, who was often seen in the street screaming at his mum or her boyfriend, and was frequently visited by the police.

The street itself was busy, as people used it as a way of avoiding a major intersection. Our front room looked out on the footpath, so every time someone walked past the house it felt as though they were in our front yard. 

You can see why we wanted to move.

Where we live now couldn't be more different in lots of ways. We are the last house in the street, a nice quiet No Through Road. Instead of neighbours on our right side we have a local creek and walking track, with a playground five minutes in one direction, and roughly a twenty five minute walk to Mars' school in the other direction.

But one of the best things about where we live now is our new neighbours. You already know about X-Man and his baby brother Bumblebee. Their parents are Captain Spreadsheet and Ms Awesome, and they live two doors up from us. We didn't meet them until we'd lived in our house for just over a year, which looking back seems like a great pity. 

In between their family and ours lives the Z family, so named because they each have a z in their first name. Master Z and Baby Z are only weeks apart in age from X-Man and Bumblebee, and Mars and Venus are great friends with all of them.

But really, they are not our neighbours any more. They are our friends, and we are so grateful for them. In the last few days alone I've given a cup of sultanas to Mrs Z in the middle of a baking crisis, been out for lunch with Ms Awesome, borrowed some specialist screwdrivers from Mr Z to change a rear light bulb on the car after Ms Awesome followed me down the street to tell me the globe was blown, looked after X-Man for a while so his mum could have a break, and enjoyed Quiche Thursday with the two small boys, the two baby boys, the two mums and X-Man's Grandma.

And if you wanted any more evidence, it arrived tonight. I received a text message from Ms Awesome, enquiring as to my shoe size. Less than an hour later she quietly knocked on the door and handed me these.

And the reason for this wonderful impromptu gift? We were talking recently about classic literature and she knows I'm a fan of Jane Austen. So when she saw these boots with their scenes of the English countryside she was reminded of Mr Darcy, and of me.

And that's why her code name is Ms Awesome.

So I don't really think it's fair to call all these wonderful people my neighbours. Even though it is entirely accurate, it does nothing to explain how caring and thoughtful they are, and what a tight little community we've become, or how devastated we would all be if any of us had to move away.

Still, all things pass. So for now I am just so grateful, not for my neighbours, but for my friends who happen to live right here.

Training wheels

Before Christmas it became clear that Mars really didn't need the training wheels on his bike any more. So he and Supernerd spent some time out on the bike path practising, so that he would gain confidence and we would be able to ditch the training wheels forever.

Supernerd thought it might be a good idea to start by taking just one training wheel off, so Mars would feel that he was doing well, but would still able to use the second wheel as a kind of bike stand (his bike doesn't have one), and all the reports indicate that he only fell off two or three times each time they went out to practice.

Often when I think about my son I am greatly reminded of my younger brother, and the things he used to do when we were young. Any activity associated with riding tricycles or bicycles, wth or without extra wheels, was fraught with peril for my brother, and my parents used to keep a running tally called Gravity Versus Steven. Often, gravity was the victor.

Anyway, we asked Mars to explain to his Nana what he had been working on down on the bike path. The conversation went like this:

Mars: "Nana, we took one of the wheels off my bike!"

Nana (with tongue in cheek): "I hope it wasn't the front wheel."

Mars: "Yes, it was the front wheel! Now it's a unicycle with training wheels!"

So it becomes clear that not only has Mars inherited some of Uncle Steve's love/hate relationship with gravity, but he also shares some of the mad sense of humour that comes from my side of the family.

I believe that some fun times lie ahead.

Dream

Today I dreamed that I was pregnant. 

The dream started at the moment where I looked down to see a suddenly massive belly, and the shock of the realisation that what I thought was just gradual weight gain was actually something much more.

Then somehow, weirdly, I was able to discern the baby's head and cup my hands around it, and I knew that she was a girl, and I had to tell Supernerd about her, because he, like me, had no idea that she existed.

Then I woke up and, not surprisingly, never got back to sleep. 

I was a bit upset because she was beautiful, just like Venus, and I loved her. Even though she wasn't real and I knew it was a dream, I loved her. The mothering instinct is just that strong. I couldn't help it.

The plan is for no more children for us, and that was a hard decision to make for lots of reasons. So it was nice to fool myself for a few minutes, but hard to wake up from that dream and get on with my day. Thankfully we were going out, so I had other things to think about.

But as I sit down for some quiet time at the end of the day she comes back to me, and I know what I need to keep in mind above all things is that I am so blessed already, I have so much to be grateful for, not the least of which are people who love me and need me very much.

Venus may never have a little sister, it's true. But if she's very lucky, one day she might have a little girl of her own, and then she will begin to understand just how much I love her.