We’re up in coastal Maine for the next week, catching up on a missed year of beaches, lobster, ice cream, and family. It usually takes me five hours to get here, but we clearly weren’t the only people catching up yesterday, and Kina spent more or less the entire seven hours (save one hour-long nap) in bumper-to-bumper traffic asking us if we were in Maine yet.

The payoff, dear reader, is worth it. Expect shorter missives for the next week, but no fewer zingers and bon mots from our esteemed publisher and neighborhood lifeguard.

Yeh-Yeh art directed today’s edition of Parade, depicting the seven of us in this vacation rental. Laurea drew the faces, and after a long stretch of negotiation (requiring the release of one episode of Adventure Time), Kina agreed to draw the hair on everybody. She took great care, as you can clearly see. Have a good week, everybody.

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