The Dog Should Be Nervous

Each Monday, I make up for the weekend's excess by preparing an overwhelmingly healthy dinner that often isn't very good. Last night featured overgrilled swordfish, tough carrots, apple pie fries--as seen on t.v.--and aged yellow squash. Dessert flashed like a rescue beacon. Birdie, Big Guy and I eagerly prepared to taste-test Twilight chocolate bars and sugar wafers. (See Lucky Enough To Have Jacob and Shopping Impaired.) First, the chocolate. Birdie grabbed the Jacob-wrapped bar, while Big Guy zoomed in on Bella and I settled for Edward. Wrappers peeled back, we each bit our bar and discovered, really bad chocolate. I hadn't expected much from Edward and Big Guy thought Bella might promise more than she'd deliver. As for Birdie, she will think twice before falling for a werewolf. Moving on to sugar wafers, we fed bits of wafers to a blindfolded Birdie. She sampled a brown "chocolate" wafer four times and twice declared it vanilla. She called one bite of yellow "vanilla" wafer strawberry, while another was guessed vanilla. She judged a sample of the pink bar as strawberry based on its lingering not-found-in-nature aftertaste. Then she declared herself "done" as in "one more bite and I'm going to be sick." Birdie downed a large glass of water. We surveyed the remains. Then the dog snored. And we agreed: If any of us were stranded on a desert island with a Twilight bar, a pack of sugar wafers, and the dog--one would be barbeque, the others would be thrown into the sea.