Dear Diary,

Today we woke up and watched a couple hours of cartoons. We had pancakes and smoothies for breakfast and guacamole and chips for snack. Then Curtis dropped the older kids and me off at a birthday party while he took the baby to the grocery store. At the party, we ate pizza and cake and the kids played on a mermaid water slide. They had a blast! Curtis picked us up a few hours later. On the drive home, we stopped at the river so he could run a quick errand—reel in the rotting bear skull he’d dropped in at the beginning of the week. He forgot a bucket but fortunately we had a reusable grocery bag in the van, so he stuck the skull in there and threw it in the back. We made it about a quarter of a mile down the road before we had to pull over because the smell was so potent, so reminiscent of rotting flesh and fresh diarrhea, that we were all gagging and it was unsafe to drive any further. Curtis tied it on my roof instead. The skull made it home safely, thank goodness. Unfortunately, however, Curtis found that “most of its best teeth” had fallen out, so he only boiled it in his cauldron for a few minutes before abandoning the whole endeavor. The entire yard still smells like shit.

Love,
Allie