New flavor. Do not recommend.

Unless you have an insatiable thirst for store-brand cough syrup poured into a melted Slurpee that’s sat in a hot car for five days. Followed by four hours of sweaty jitters, of course.

Also: My office bingo card is as winning as a trump spelling be.

Last week we cleared a mountain of crap off this garage shelf:

Today I cleared a mountain of wine off the garage floor:

And I cleaned out the garage refrigerator. And poured out an entire forgotten 12-pack of carbonationless Sprite that expired in 2016. And scrubbed the weird yellowish liquid that perpetually weeps down the garage walls and no the drywall isn’t peeing and we aren’t aliens or witches so don’t even think any of that or I’ll put a hex on you.

Also: It’s a delicate balance to scrub the grime off the garage-door opener without repeatedly opening and closing the garage door. It’s like Jenga. Or Jengarage. Or Garenga.

Beware the wiles of Bitch Kitty ...

This is the little game we play: She waits by the top of the basement stairs for me. I approach her cautiously from the other side of the planet. She growls lowly like a power drill without enough torque. I casually creep closer without making eye contact, as though all of my interest lies with a random sock that fell out of the laundry pile near her. She amps up her growling to sound more like a Kitchen Aid mixer struggling with its dough hook and a particularly hearty bread recipe. I make eye contact. She makes eye contact. I slowly, s l o w l y, begin the process of maybe kind of thinking about someday possibly squatting in her general vicinity to facilitate the hypothetical scratching of her ears. She shifts her growling into third gear, this time sounding like a vacuum with a strip of raffia stuck in its roller during post-Christmas clean-up. I get brutally murdered by a suspiciously nearby surgeon who promptly disarticulates my arms, rendering me profoundly incapable of living, breathing or furry-ear scratching. She shifts into overdrive, sounding almost exactly like the steamroller that all-too-conveniently appears from behind the aforementioned laundry sock to crush my disarticulated remains flatter than the aforementioned bread, which, in my selfish hurry to pet her, I completely forgot to do the part where you fold in the yeast and let the dough rise for three hours. I softly sing "Nothing's gonna harm you. Not while I'm around," which, through the restorative power of show tunes, revives me and rearticulates my arms. She rolls onto her back and does that adorable Fosse thing with her front paws (pictured here), all of which is the international symbol for "I trust you and I unconditionally love you so I'm showing you my vulnerable underbelly in the expectation you'll stop what you're doing and come rub it nonstop until President Pete takes office." I, blithely trusting her yet again, reach out tenderly, gingerly and gratefully to overcome my crippling yet understandable trust issues and finally—FINALLY—rub her soft, furry tummy in servile gratitude. She draws me in with her calculating eyes and her deceitful body language. I, emotionally scarred and spiritually broken by years of this unceasing abuse, finally—FINALLY—make finger-to-tip-of-tummy-furcontact, tears of grateful joy and social acceptance streaming down my face like healing waters spilling forth from the nose of a centuries-old Madonna statue in an Italian grotto. She, once again reaching the triumphant climax of our emotional Grand Guignol, rolls away from me, hisses like a steam brake struggling to stop a runaway train, waddles maybe three feet away, plops her geriatric belly firmly on the carpet, softens her hate-filled eyes to a dewy, inviting semblance of friendship and love, and meows plaintively as though to invite me closer to pet her. I approach her cautiously from the other side of the planet ...

Twen. Ty.

Twenty—HOW IS IT ALREADY TWENTY?—years ago today I sat alone in my dining room with my phone pressed tight to my ear for my first listen to the cooing, contented breaths of my newborn nephew as he lay warm and pink and loved on my sister's chest two massive states away. I was an uncle. And I was instantly hooked. My little nephew and I (and later his precious little sister) have spent the majority of the last 20 years living in separate cities, but the time we've spent together through those years has been a steady progression of googly sounds, tosses in the air, impressively hearty belly laughs, long walks playing 1-2-3 Whee!, enough firemen toys and clothes to outfit a three-county volunteer brigade, underpants jokes, heroic efforts to make Apples to Apples card pairings inappropriate enough to elicit more of the aforementioned belly laughs, faithful monthly 529 payments, Mickey Mouse waffles, random uncle ‘n’ nephew meals at Village Inn, morally corrupting meals at Ed Debevic's and Dick's Last Resort, baseball games, show-choir concerts, hand-me-downs, and now a mature adult friendship that has come full-circle to the extent that we pretty much spend all our texting time exchanging the grownup equivalent of underpants jokes. He and I are currently in that brodude phase where we rarely exchange hugs and I'd somehow feel weird telling him to his face that I love him. But I love him. And this close, personal social-media post counts as one giant lean-in-don't-touch-and-pat-pat-pat bro hug. My once eternally jovial, read-to-me lap-sitting boy has grown up, successfully navigated his awkward years, and emerged as a well-informed scholar, a golden-armed pitcher, a freakishly tall monster and—as you can see in this last pic—a dangerous lady killer who somehow thinks fly fishing in the dark is fun. He's a great kid with a kind heart and a confident gait and a wicked curve ball and he's all grown up and gonna take on the world. By all accounts he’s thriving in his sophomore year in college—he just returned bursting with stories from a fascinating J-term in Indonesia—and we all delight in his texts that are a mix of proud academic accomplishments, insightful political commentary, excited details about the baseball games he’s pitched or pretty much anything else about his favorite sports teams, the occasional reports about his life in college ... and the occasional silences that tell us he’s off finding his way in—and making the most of—his life in college. And we all hope he comes back often for some more belly laughs and underpants jokes.

She wishes she could hate me to death

We've been playing this game where she hides behind the banister when I try to take her picture and then she leans out just far enough to show me her scowl of displeasure when she can tell I've stopped pointing my phone in her direction. But I totally just faked her out long enough to capture her Glare of Painful Bloody Death before she could suppress it for the paparazzi. And now I'm afraid to go upstairs.

#BitchKittyLife

So how does this work?

Do I pick one from each column or do I get to mix and match any three like on the Denny's value menu? Or is this one of those brain teasers where I have to re-organize the list so the first letter of every line spells a common phrase or a popular song title? Or maybe I have to clear the board--which automatically disqualifies me because I refuse to be yoga pants as a matter of principle. They should really pass out leaflets with the rules spelled out clearly or nobody's going to play ... which means nobody will ever win Eternal Damnation.

#NotVeryIntelligentlyDesigned

Five not-quite-right-in-the-head gay gays

One completely unstructured weekend in a rented house. Lots of unhealthy snacks. Hours and hours of smeared mascara.

Shithole Genius is about to shout NEGRO! Or something.

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Chicks dig me