7-down, resting in peace & coyote control

Dear Rachel,

I had an upset tummy after dining out with friends the other night. So I stopped at a gas station for a Sprite. Now, I’m not some anti-sugar granola mama, but it’s been a little while since I had a 20 oz. anything. And it was gnarly. I mean, sweet to the point of gagging. Like licking the bathroom floor at the oompa-loompa factory. Did they do something to pump up the sweet? And why?

– Sugar Mama

Dear Fructose Franny,

Corn syrup, baby! Also, it’s called growing up. Somewhere along the line we give up the affinity for Sour Patch Kids and become vineyard junkies. I mean, a rose by any other name would taste as sweet, sure, but there’s a reason most Sprite commercials don’t show people “dining out with friends” so much as people doing unpronounceable skateboard tricks with friends. You require a certain resilience and resistance to pain. 

– From the Pepsi generation, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I read recently that the human body requires rest 42% of the time. Not every day, but cumulatively, or it will blow up in your face. I’m wondering what kind of wiggle room I might have with that 42% number. Like, if I rested extra as a baby, does that still work to balance out the three-hours-of-sleep nights I get now? How long until this blows up? Can it at least blow up when I’m at work instead of when I’m finally taking a vacation?

– Time Bomb

Dear Tick Tick,

Maybe THAT is the reason why the meaning of life, the universe and everything can be derived from the number 42. MOAR NAPS NAOW. I would believe that all things are possible with slightly more than 10 hours of rest each day. All things, that is, except the things I’m not doing because I’m busy resting. Damn, I really hate this Puritan ethic I inherited from everyone before me who just couldn’t stop.

– Give it a rest already, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

We’ve recently had a coyote coming close to the house. I’m in the camp that no one in this house (human or otherwise) weighs under 70 pounds, and we should live and let live. My wife is increasingly of the opinion that I’m not a man unless I run out there in my undershirt and beat it over the head with a cast iron skillet (or at least scare it off by banging on it). We need you to settle this dispute and promise to abide by your verdict.

– Wile E. Hubby

Dear Acme Spouse,

Live and let live, baby. The more you try to eradicate coyotes, the more they take over. Plus, you know, they’re living, breathing, feeling, eating, screwing, thinking beings just like… well, not like ALL of us, but like a lot of us. Those of us living Sprite-commercial lives, anyway. Which, if a middle-aged man were ever to make it in one, it would be in a white undershirt banging pots at wild carnivores.

– Awoo, Rachel