My daughter woke up at one point - I heard her saying "come in!" at 3am and had to go in and explain that there was a critter trying to get into the kitchen to get food. She saw no reason our kitchen couldn't accommodate a "creature" since it was cold outside and we had a lot of food. I then had to explain that outside animals are better outside. She seemed to buy it, but this morning she had created an entire cosmology about the creature that knocks on the door at night.

aw

My daughter will not grow up with vermin. She will not have rodents that bite coming into her room. She will consider it deviant to crush animals to death because the cat's too lazy to eat them. She will not lose classmates to plague spread by squirrels, she will not have siblings nearly killed by hantavirus because her parents are too drunk to deal with the squalor. She will not fear running the garbage disposal at 3am; she will not have reason to run the garbage disposal at 3am. And that is something worth drinking to. That is something that outweighs the obsession with poncy German clocks, that outweighs the life wasted in pursuit of words never read.

I'm doing a better job than my parents did, so it hasn't been a total waste.

best thing I've read today thanks