Loved the article.

Today is Father's Day for me, since my father was out of town until yesterday.

My dad is a dandelion-killer. He kills other things, too... blackberry brambles, hollow trees far from anything they might fall on, picturesque abandoned sheds full of king snakes. He grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania with strict second-generation German parents, spent 25 years as an officer in the Army, and he prefers "nature" when it has been recently bushhogged.

However, he is mellowing with age. We admire field mice together. The king snake which lives in the feed barrel in the barn is allowed to remain. The raccoons which insisted on eating out of the cats' bowl inspired him to set out a second bowl for the raccoons. When a killdee laid her eggs in the gravel of the driveway, he procured four orange road cones and set them up on either side of the nest. We all had to drive through the grass until the eggs hatched. So he is warming to wild fauna, if not to wild flora.

He's warmed to children, too. He was strict and distant when I was young; today he is the slave of a two-year old, patiently participating in her games.

I doubt he will ever be fond of dandelions. But that's okay.

When I was getting dressed, I took an inventory of my makeup containers and the sizes on them. I call bullshit. The total amount of makeup I would use in a year (assuming I wore full makeup every day, which I don't) does not come to 5 lbs.

On a daily basis, I use only two products that a man with normal hygiene wouldn't use. Foundation with sunscreen: .35 oz, about 1 per month. Moisturizer: .5 oz, has lasted me 6 months so far.

That adds up to about 5 OUNCES a year, not 5 pounds. And I'm not buying that 100% of each of these products is absorbed into my system. Dermatologists recommend that people use both moisturizer and sunscreen.

As for the other products I use, the ones that men use as well, I question whether London's Daily Telegraph seriously thinks that not using toothpaste would make women healthier.

My first guess was "alert". That happened to be the right answer.

So, um, yay, but it doesn't make for a very interesting game when out of all the words in the English language you guess the right one! I shall try it again.

Won after 13 rounds - my word was horses, computer's word slued (which seems a trifle obscure, but it's an anagram of 'duels').

Anonymous below: did you tell it to use 5 letter words? If your word has the wrong number of letters for the game setting, you will get an error. It defaults to 4 letters.

Same goes for the "cam" person - was the computer trying to guess 3 letter words?

Not "horses" which would be 6 letters.

my father is a Tolkein nerd, so I was a hair's breadth from being called (and I'm not kidding here) Eowyn.

and how her good friend named her daughter Perelandra so it really could be worse.

Oh dear.

My best friend's daughter is named "Bree" after the (male) horse from "A Horse and his Boy." Since Bree is a nickname and the horse's full name is, if I recall, Brinnyhinnyhooeyha, it could be worse.

My father was a Tolkien nerd too, which is why I grew up with a Corgi named Eowyn. See? Pet name. The proper outlet for naming creativity. The pet does not get teased on the playground.

Speaking of names I wouldn't burden a child with, one of our traditional family names is Merriman. I love the name, but just couldn't bring myself to do that to another human being...

My instinct would be to give the sister an ultimatum - "I'll help you but only if you dump him and move here" - but I'm aware that my instinctive reaction would be the wrong thing to do.

Cutting her off is the right thing to do as far as the sister is concerned, but there are kids involved. The kids are innocent victims of their parents' poor decisions, and if there's a way to help them without enabling the sister and her husband, it's worth a try.

Froggy's idea, which was to give the sister goods and services, not cash, seems like it might help.

I wonder how many posts I would have to read before finding one that commented on the article.