It doesn’t take much in the way of deductive skills, I’m sure, to conclude that we had a bit of a rough weekend, Lydia and I. I’ll spare my readers the unpleasant details (and spare myself the recounting of them), and leave the subject saying only that I fervently hope I’m paying my dues now and will have a dream of a teenager a few years from now, when she actually is a teenager.

Today has been much smoother, with nary a harsh word spoken between us. She didn’t even complain about dinner, though there was some confusion regarding what exactly I was serving. She came upstairs while I was cooking and asked, “That German shepherd thing, is that what we’re having?”

“What German shepherd thing?”

“You know, with the meat and potatoes and cheese.”

I managed, barely, to stifle a chuckle. “Oh, shepherd’s pie,” I said, my voice made carefully even, without a trace of amusement. “Yes, that’s what we’re having.”

A few minutes later she went to the little white-board menu we’ve got on the fridge and scrubbed out last week’s entries. Then she painstakingly wrote “shepherd’s paj” on today’s line.