And so it was that the family ate their way through leftovers for a whole day and night. And they went to the playgrounds, and to lunch, in the streets near their home, as they contemplated the long holiday month ahead. And there were in the same neighborhood pine tree vendors abiding in the park, keeping watch over their wreaths by night.

For several years now, I have plodded off to the open-air tree market that poofs into existence every year to serve the piney needs of the greater North Brooklyn area. In each of those years, I pony up twenty bucks for a cute little wreath to hang on my door, because I know better than to buy an actual tree. But this year is different, because:

1. I have a sentient child who is aware of Christmas, and

2. We plan to be trapped in our apartment for the duration of the year

Kina has no patience for moments of meditation, regardless of the lingering effects of bread stuffing and roast turkey. Since her tiny rocketship metabolism is scarcely affected by gravy intake, she doesn’t yet understand the importance of a good post-Thanksgiving nap. On a typical Thanksgiving, this is not a problem, since we will be with either Laurea’s whole family or my own, and the cumulative attention of seven people in a largish suburban home will allow any one or two of us to find a good nappin’ corner, but this was the first Thanksgiving in eighteen years that we have celebrated in our own living room, and so corners (and by extension, naps) were hard to come by. I’ll spare you the gory details, but you can safely assume that Kina ensured every last carbohydrate we had was well-spent by the time we dragged her, overtired and bawling, to bed last night. (The illustration in today’s paper of her dragging me around is also an accurate representation of yesterday’s events.)

The child definitely had plenty of calories to work with, after having consumed several pounds of roast turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce. (At one point, she was spotted gnawing an entire turkey leg.) I had pre-ordered a turkey from the local butcher, who had warned me that turkey sizing was an imprecise art—some years are small-turkey years, others big-turkey years. I had asked for the smallest possible turkey and resigned myself to the possibility that we might have to eat fourteen pounds of turkey. I was wrong; we had to eat slightly more than seventeen pounds of turkey. In hindsight, it’s hilarious that I was worried about this, since Kina eats like two grown adults. She likes white meat, which is either a tremendous compliment to my skills at roasting turkey or a horrible disappointment regarding my child’s taste in poultry—no self-respecting Chinese person would, of their own volition, choose breast meat over a chicken thigh. In any case, this turkey’s getting eaten.

In a year like this, it can be handy to have a little drill sergeant telling you to get off your ass—no dwelling in your isolation, moping about for lost holidays. As Kina reminds us constantly, the performance is yet to come. Until then, we eat up and practice, practice. We’ll need all our strength to muddle through. I hope you are muddling through; we’re thankful, again, for you.

I spent twelve hours in the kitchen today. She ripped bread like a real champ, and the stuffing was indeed a triumph. Pity that I had to charge her forty dollars for an fabric eggplant. We hope you found something to be thankful for today, and that others found cause to be thankful for you. We are all thankful for Kina.

dad

Last night, when Kina was on the phone with her Lala, a recent headline from The Daily Kina came up, and Kina was momentarily taken aback: “You know The Daily Kina?” she asked, amazed that her own grandmother might read a newspaper that, until now, she apparently believed existed solely for her personal entertainment. This, in turn, surprised me, because I assumed she knew that there were TDK aficionados. I’ve produced two hundred and thirty-seven of these front pages and written a daily newsletter for a hundred and fifty-two consecutive days. I talk to friends and family who bring up random headlines like they were actual news all the time, but it seems that this is all new to Kina—a celebrity unaware of her own fame.

I’ve said before that there are three audiences for The Daily Kina: Future Kina (for posterity), her current parents (for relief), and everybody else (as a distraction). In a way, it’s fine that those audiences are separate, and it’s comforting to know that Kina has enjoyed the paper for her own reasons, but I wonder what Kina will think now that she realizes there are other people reading the paper. I want to be respectful of her needs, and I’ve been thinking recently that if she ever told me to stop doing this, I would do so in an instant; I just assumed she already knew. Some day, I’ll stop writing these, either because I will have gotten lazy or because she wants a little alone time. If it’s the latter, I hope that she and I would take the time I’d otherwise be spending writing these things and go back to read them all together; when I put the washable markers to the page every morning, it’s that day that I’m thinking of. In any case, at the moment, she seems unbothered and amused by it all, and so the newsroom plows on. We take our mission seriously, and we are grateful both for our readership and for our hilarious subject and publisher, in whose judgement our faith is further diminished now that we realize she was pouring all her wealth into a newspaper that she believed was intended only for her, though it does explain why she has been so cavalier about all the fart jokes.

Hi to all of you, again. Kina knows you’re here.

Kina is really fond of a particular brand of orange juice (high end, natch) that very aggressively markets itself as Floridian. On the label, under the expiration date, are the dot-matrix-printed words “ONLY FLORIDA FRUIT”. Somehow, this juice is so Extremely Florida that it has convinced her by osmosis that oranges only come from Florida, a state that is effectively an endless expanse of orange groves full of happy women with flowers in their hair who pick the oranges and squeeze them into sixteen-ounce bottles strictly for Kina’s enjoyment. Never underestimate the Florida citrus lobby and its careful maintenance of this shared delusion.

I haven’t told Kina about all the alligators, but I did point out that oranges aren’t the only thing from Florida. Her friend Des is a proud Floridian, for example. Kina replied that Sloanie’s mom Dara is, too (or her grandmother, at least). Even Kina’s own father is from Florida, technically! This led Kina to the conclusion that everybody whose name starts with D is from Florida, which is a reasonable hypothesis, given the context. “What about Sloanie? Where do people who start with S come from?” she asked. “I think Sloane was born in New York,” I said, “and you were, too.” She found that less crisp than the idea of a state overflowing with oranges and people whose names start with D, but New York isn’t the hubristic tropical paradise that Florida is, so what can you really expect?

If your name starts with S or K, know that you’re a native New Yorker for life by Kina rules. If your name starts with D, grab some oranges on your way up from Tampa. If you have literally any other name, let us know where you were born, and we’ll tell Kina where people with your initials come from.

We all have our COVID birthdays this year, and today we got to celebrate Laurea’s—a momentous occasion for Kina’s best mommy in the world, and a day of chilly luxury for the birthday girl, who got to walk around the Cloisters and eat Korean BBQ out on the street. As always this year, it’s the things that feel 2019-normal that feel 2020-amazing. Imagine looking at the unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters—in 2020! Have some Korean BBQ—in 2020! This is how we judge birthdays now.

This morning, when Kina presented her award for Best Mommy (a gorgeous pastel portrait) to her actual best mommy, she waited patiently (at first) for the gratitude of a mother impressed, then pushed aggressively for a “thank you”. It’s important to say “thank you”, even when you feel thanked! So, this message to the best mommy in the world: Thank you, Laurea. We are thankful. Remember to say “thank you” the next time you see Kina. Always take care of your family. Good bye!

dad

Before we conceded defeat at the hands of the iPad, one of the best ways to entertain Kina on a long car ride was to ask her to look for “balls”, or water towers, along the side of the road. Set to the task, she would stare wistfully into the distance, hunting for reservoirs of potable water suspended above the trees. In New York City, they’re hard to come by, since our water cascades downhill from the Catskills to meet us; all our water, in other words, is more or less in the sky already. When we leave town, though, it’s water towers for days. The “balls” with which Kina is fascinated are a very particular kind of water tower—the spheroidal single-column elevated storage tank (third from left in the illustration at the top of the page)—but she appreciates the standard multi-column elevated storage tank (at left) and the menacing composite elevated storage tank (second from left) in a pinch.

In response to Kina’s call for photos of water towers, our friend Emma points out that the German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher spent roughly three decades producing two hundred and twenty-four stunningly bland photographs of water towers. Those photos are available in a book, but reading it is not nearly as entertaining as simply staring out the passenger window of a car and hunting them down yourself. As the vibrations of the road lull you halfway to sleep, the trees and highway exits melt into an emerald gray cloud, punctuated with hundred-thousand-gallon raindrops advertising local high school sports teams. Time to nap. Dream of cold water.

Kina has the sort of extraordinary precision in her senses that you often forget children must have. In recent issues of The Daily Kina, we’ve covered her heightened sense of smell, but it’s true of her hearing as well. Both Laurea and I spent much of our teens and twenties abusing our ears, and so we cannot hear the sorts of subtle buzzing and whispers that Kina can—which often leads to creepy exchanges in the evening, in which Kina will call out from her bedroom things like, “What is that whispering!?” or “What was that noise?!”

A few weeks ago, it started out as “I don’t like that ticktick sound!” I went into her bedroom and spent a few minutes listening for any ticking—to no avail. I went back into the living room. A few minutes later, “I don’t like the ticking! Make the ticking stop, Daddy!” Same routine—didn’t hear anything at all, felt slightly eerie. Finally, after a third call for aid, I put my ear up to the air filter in her room and heard the very quiet oscillation of a misaligned fan. I jiggled the filter, made the ticking stop, off to bed. Each night for the next week, we went through the same routine, until I finally gave up and disassembled the filter to check for any loose screws. Given my limited experience as a handyman, I made it worse, and we’ve since had to replace it. This was great until we turned on her humidifier for the first time tonight, which has led to several visits to investigate a subtle burbling. It’s like living with Spider-Man.

Maybe air quality’s not that important after all.

A STATEMENT

The hard-working journalists of our newsroom once again protest the intrusion of our publisher into the editorial operations of The Daily Kina. Today, as on several prior occasions, this publication’s owner strode directly past the press to demand her headline get top treatment. Given the complexity of the editorial judgement required to lay out our front page, even the slightest pressure from the business office to reframe the day’s news stands to derail the reputation of this august institution, but the brash vulgarity of today’s top headline—a statement on our publisher’s own flatulence, directed seemingly only to our managing editor—is an existential threat to our collective efforts here at TDK. Our entire staff, from the copy desk to the art department (who were forced to depict every detail of the publisher’s gaseous emissions), to our most senior editors, stand as one in opposition to the apparent efforts of our ownership group to debase our work and undermine the nearly eight months of daily journalism that makes up this beacon of childhood memory. We call upon the publisher to respect the division of church and state that allows us to freely and fearlessly conduct investigations into her life and work; it is literally our only beat, which in some ways makes no sense at all, but people seem to like it, and so the pretense of independence is important. If you value this coverage and the integrity of The Daily Kina, we ask that you send a sternly-worded email to the attention of our publisher, who cannot read.

dad

We did not get into the “If we all trust each other, we are a team” storyline in yesterday’s honking newsletter, but it makes its way to the top of A1 today, as Kina announces the name of our team (“Great Jimmy”) and our hallmark emotional state (thumbs-up). If you are forced to confront a daily, concerted, and mildly incompetent attack on democracy, I cannot recommend highly enough a perky preschooler with a real can-do attitude as a family coach and general pick-me-up. It is also quite handy to have a pandemic team name.

There is an endearing thing about the way Kina does thumbs-up. For her, it’s less a sign than an exchange, requiring that the person to whom the thumbs-up is offered both return the thumbs-up and then press their thumb firmly against hers. It’s a Kinaism that we should all get into once the smoke of the pandemic clears—vastly more self-affirming than a typical handshake, and with a smaller surface area. For Kina, thumbs-up is never a unilateral affair, but a team sport. We agree to be all for it, whatever it is, together. That is the spirit of Great Jimmy.

Spa-Goer Demands Palo Santo Smoke

I don’t know when exactly it happened, but I have become that New York driver—the one who honks to remind others of his existence, who honks as he passes, who honks when the light turns green, who honks when confronted with any uncertainty or delay. I don’t want to be this driver, and yet I am this driver*, and Kina has begun to wonder why I am this driver, and so I’ve had to explain it to her.

Invariably, when I honk at somebody—even gently, if you can summon a gentle honk—Kina asks “WHO HONKED THAT HORN??” as if there were a line-up of suspects that did not include me. Daddy did it, we tell her. “Why did he honk his horn?” she asks.

Why did I honk my horn?

For months now, Kina has admonished us throughout dinner to “stop talking”, which is a real bummer for a couple of parents whose favorite pastime is talking over meals. Our pre-pandemic dinner structure had Kina eating first, taking a bath, and going to bed; our own dinner followed, which gave us the luxury of adult conversation and spicy meals. As we have grown more cloistered, though, our dinners have merged, which has been good for our family in pretty significant ways: Kina has developed (slightly) more sophisticated tastes, we spend more time together, we eat earlier, and we only have to cook one dinner. So what if our meals aren’t as spicy? It’s nice to have the old post-war nuclear family dinner.

Except for the rule of silence. We have addressed our efforts to circumvent this rule in the pages of our newspaper before. In July, Laurea and I attempted to speak to one another through Kina, and a few weeks later we tried singing our conversation. Neither tactic held up for more than a day or so, but we recently stumbled on a method that has felt less like a trick and more like a proper tool for conversational fairness: the taking of turns. Rather than reassure Kina that we’ll let her speak her mind after Laurea and I finish our conversation, we simply run our dinner table chats as a round-robin sequential lecture. “It’s your turn, Daddy,” the moderator says, after which I make a lengthy comment about a news article relating to COVID immunology. “Now you,” she whispers, pointing to Mommy, who replies to my comment with her own nuanced point about people traveling for Thanksgiving. As she finishes, we turn to Kina, who looks pensively skyward before launching into a soliloquy about different kinds of pasta sauces, the sorts of cupcakes that her friends like, and how farts come out of her butthole. Once that’s run its course, she points silently at me, at which point I can freely decide to elaborate on her fart statement or take a different conversational path. (I often, but not always, choose the detour.)

It turns out this is a pretty fun way to have conversation, because it means that no one person can dominate the table with his rants about mask denialists or her endless observations about flatulence. And it’s fun to watch Kina discover what dinner chit-chat is—and hopefully, the various topics that are and aren’t appropriate. It’s been interesting to come to the realization that we owe Kina an equal share of our conversation at the dinner table (even though she’s only one-eleventh my age). Another reminder that this kid we’re isolating with is a full-fledged human being, who thinks, fears, loves, and farts just like the rest of us. We’re glad to meet her.

Sometimes I think back to the early days of Kina on swings, before she could talk and when even the slightest push was a thrill. What a contrast to today’s Kina, with her specifically-selected swings, carefully-calibrated push heights, and custom leaf accessories. She is at an age when I imagine one might expect her to learn how to kick herself to her desired altitude—and she knows it—but demands to be pushed nonetheless. This is true on “bucket swings” and “big-girl swings”, both of which require equal attention from her on every visit to the playground. It is unbelievable how long this child can spend on a swing. Have you tried to ride on a swing for more than two minutes as an adult? It’s nauseating, and just watching a kid do it—for literal hours—makes you wonder what miracles of the inner ear our children are afforded. How have we evolved to this point? What advantage do we gain over other species by being able to fly back and forth for hours on end? I recently developed a repetitive stress injury in my swing-pushing arm, and I’ve had to move to my non-dominant swinging arm in order to meet Her Majesty’s demands. It is on days like this that I feel like The Giving Tree, rubbed to a stump by years of mechanical effort. And yet, guess who took a long, luxurious bath last night, her tummy full of imaginary ice cream, floating gauzily in the tub?

Let’s just say it wasn’t the one-armed experimental taco stand entrepreneur.

dad

The last week has been a weird one. We’ve muddled our way through a called election, watched as the sitting president has ignored and disputed that outcome, learned that a nest of murder hornets was vacuumed out of a tree in Washington State, and come to understand that some 40% of Americans plan to travel for Thanksgiving in the midst of an uncontrolled outbreak of COVID-19. But the kid’s in good spirits, at least! We are a fortunate household, in that both parents are present and working in largely good health, and so we’re relatively confident that our particular three-year-old, ignorant of all these historic developments, is living something that approximates a normal psychological year (at least by the standards of most three-year-olds, who are both extremely psychological and not particularly normal). Even as I have caromed around the news all week, Kina—our household’s least literate citizen—is breezy as a day at the beach.

Time flies, and life’s too short, she said at lunch yesterday, when we asked her if she wanted some noodles on her plate. I think she might have picked up on the fact that I’ve been watching my diet in an effort to reduce my cholesterol (and maybe gain some semblance of control over my life) and it’s probably clear to her that in recent days I’ve been more, shall we say, liberal with my pork intake. Kina has not been forced to forgo noodles in recent days, but it is true that life’s too short to deny oneself pasta. While the tone of this week is no less urgent, it is at least marginally less panic-inducing than some of the months this year. (As I’ve been saying this week, it’s not so much that we’re healing, and it’s likely we haven’t exactly stopped the bleeding either, but I am cautiously optimistic that we’ve reduced the stabbing around these parts.) So what do you do when life is urgent but trending slightly better? You eat what you need to. Time flies when you’re freaking out, and you have only to look around to see how short life is.

Wear your masks, eat some noodles, and look to the future.

We have arrived at that moment when the newsletter is just the subject line. I cannot improve upon it.

dad

We’re now well into the long apology news cycle, and Kina has now grown accustomed to saying “I’m sorry” in response to her various familial catastrophes. She also now understands the importance of forgiveness, and requires a verbal “it’s okay” in response to her heartfelt apologies. I’m sympathetic—she needs the feedback to make sure she’s getting it right. Imagine how exhausting and confusing it must be to learn that apologies are a thing—that acting on your feelings often requires that you then act on somebody else’s feelings? How can being angry make other people angry? And why are you (possibly still enraged) in those moments suddenly in charge of that other person’s anger? As I think about it now, it does seem pretty unfair, and yet Kina is getting a handle on it. I’m very proud of her, even as her penchant for punching has not quite yet subsided.

It’s not that Kina really understands the various things that she has done wrong. The most difficult lesson I’m learning as a parent is that my anger—even when it’s mostly subtle—is often the most obvious signpost for her as she navigates her way from inchoate id-machine to civil humanity. I have to bear and transcend my anger for my sake and hers, because it is our job as parents to create well-socialized human beings. We have evolved to act as firewalls between these little monsters and the civilization around us, hopefully burning down to coals just before they chew off somebody’s finger. It’s hard work, taming children, but somebody’s got to do it.

So, because Kina thinks she is apologizing for our frustration, she brings the same tenor of apology to the spilling of milk and the drawing of blood. But offering forgiveness is also exhausting (again, that thing about being responsible for another person’s emotions while your own feelings are still aflame) and I just can’t always say “don’t worry”, which really bothers Kina. Her hack, then, for transgressions she’s come to know are minor—like an overturned tumbler full of juice—is a prompt self-absolution. “It’s okay,” she tells herself (and it is) when she knows it doesn’t matter. I must be signaling that back to her, giving her license in those moments to be okay with herself. I’d like to think this means we’re finding another, more understanding, way to guide each other. I’ll still have to clean up the juice, but both of us can accept that it happens and want to spill less.

I can’t remember how exactly Kina called me “stupid” this morning, but I remember it being a pretty precise application of the word, and I also know that it’s not the first time, so she’s learning as she goes, like a predator. After lecturing her extensively about how and why we don’t use that word in this house, I got to thinking about whether or not we do use it in this house, imagining a wistful montage of all the occasions on which I’ve called a certain loathsome something or somebody “stupid” in the last four years within earshot of my impressionable child. In hindsight, then, I can say with near certainty that I have uttered the word “stupid” in front of Kina, despite understanding fully the ways in which that word is demeaning and destructive, and so I take some responsibility for helping her to put some guard rails around it—and for abandoning its use myself.

Even as I atone for my part in this, it is worth noting that Kina spends a considerable amount of time on playgrounds with six-year-old boys, who definitely haven’t yet come to terms with the nuances of ableist language and insults. There’s something very charming about being called a “poopy butt” by a three-year-old, and that charm does not translate well to being called “stupid” by a four-year-old. I can’t even imagine the myriad cruelties a six-year-old knows how to mete out, so I imagine I’ve only just begun to pay off the debt of a life of thoughtless insults by shaping a chaotic young mind.

As I said yesterday, the rules are what separate us from our monstrous inner nature, and we write the rules as we go along, wincing at our own transgressions.

It is strange to be sent to time-out by your own child, and for that time-out to restrict you to the couch—banning you from the kitchen, the bathroom, and your own bed. This happens from time to time, usually in response to my asking Kina to do something like pick up her toys or answer an annoying question more than twice. The kid knows her own way around time-out (as long-time readers might imagine) and has spent more than her share of furious two-minute stints behind a closed baby gate in her bedroom, confined there because she has thrown something at my head or kicked my head or slapped my head more than twice. (We do not, for the record, put her in time-out because she is annoying; that is her unique interpretation of time-out rules.) In this house, time-out confinement is a shared agreement regarding the rule of law, since she could almost certainly just tumble over the gate or shove her way through it—and yet does not. Accordingly, in the spirit of time-out fairness once the tables are turned, I also agree not to simply slide her chair out of the gap between the table and the wall. The rules are the rules, and they separate us from our monstrous inner nature.

I think we’re all just a bit touchy here in the newsroom, faced with the uncertainty of the world and contemplating the onset of winter and a renewed sense of isolation. That cabin fever is already setting in with the kid is worrisome, but we’re finding ways to make space for each other (and Captain Barnacles). In a way, I enjoy being in time-out for the freedom it gives me; does the chair keep the prisoner in or his jailer out? I’m wondering how this next lockdown (such as it is) will feel, as Kina is substantially better at entertaining herself, even as we have become substantially less uptight about television. That we can deal with being “done by” each other by just sliding a chair between us feels a lot healthier than the alternative, and it makes for a comfy place in the meantime to sit and think about what we’ve done.

“Mommy I Know You Miss Ottolenghi but During the Pandemic You Have to Wear Your Mask”

Our cat Gertie died almost two years ago, on New Year’s Eve, just after Kina turned two—which, as it turns out, is just old enough to have a wispy memory of one’s childhood cat. Periodically, she will see Gertie in a picture on my phone, or in the name of a local restaurant, and ask about her. Gertie was, for much of her life, an uncommonly churlish cat who took great joy in making her owners and house visitors bleed, but she was always lovingly tolerant of her infant sister, even when Kina got to the age of tail-pulling (an indignity that Gertie had never suffered at the hands of any other human being). She slept near Kina whenever she could and would blissfully sprawl out near her while she boinged around in her bouncer. We have not told Kina that, before she was born, Gertie spent a few choice weeks hate-pissing in her new crib and stroller; we feel that Gertie atoned for that in Kina’s first few days, and we do not want Kina to hold it against her.

This morning, we answered a lot of questions about Gertie and her sleeping habits. I ended up spending a not-insignificant amount of time explaining why cats don’t need pillows and yet occasionally enjoy a blanket or two. We tried to see if Kina could remember Gertie’s little bed next to the radiator (the legendary “fat head cat bed”) or how she would feed the cat little bites of Cheerio from her snack cup—she didn’t remember any of it, which is a little comforting, in that she also doesn’t remember Gertie’s passing. Kina has never asked us what happened to Gertie; in a way, she must think of her as an ephemeral friend, her absence as notable and normal as her existence. That is, in a way, an apt expression of cathood, and we think that Gertie would appreciate how respectful Kina has been of her personal space.

I’m not sure we’re ever going to get a cat again, partly because Gertie was often a total nightmare, and it’s sort of nice to live in a house that isn’t covered in hair. Kina hasn’t started to ask about pets, which gives us a little time to consider our options. Our standing response, which we have not yet had to deploy, is that it would be a great idea for her to start a cat-sitting (or dog-walking) business. She’s wonderful with little animals, and I would hate to deprive our four-legged friends the love of a child who herself benefitted so much from the unlikely love of our otherwise incredibly horrible cat.

This morning, over breakfast, Kina asked what a pandemic was. Laurea immediately punted to me, and I took some time to think before launching into an explanation about what the world is, and how it’s made of many countries—like Italy, and the Philippines, and Japan. “And Brooklyn?” she asked. Brooklyn, I explained, was a borough. “Like Queens?” she asked. Yes, like Queens. And then, just as I was asking if she had heard of The Bronx, she pulled the Kamala Harris card on me and accused me of dadsplaining her. If you know me personally, you know this is one of my deepest-seated insecurities; as a man-person who loves to explain things, I recognize the risk at any given moment that I may have taken the express train to Mansplain. That my three-year-old daughter, who has barely had time enough on this earth to be talked over by a man, would call my attention to this behavior was a terrifying reminder of just how close I stand to the precipice of boring, self-important, condescending explanations.

While I apologized in the moment for my actions, I fundamentally stand by my innovative pedagogical methods for describing pandemics. How can you understand a pandemic without understanding the concept of “global”? How can you understand that concept without understanding the idea of a community of nations? And how, in the course of explaining citizenship, can a self-respecting New York City parent pass up the opportunity to teach their kid about the five boroughs? It’s a whole lot easier to explain pandemics than it is to explain boroughs, and I believe in taking the hard road to brilliance, even when it annoys my kid.

The one thing I will stand firm on, however, is my belief that I am not responsible for her eggs getting cold in the meantime. That was thermodynamics, which I will explain to her tomorrow.