Niranjana, Melissa and Andy

Niranjana's imagination gets a little long-winded sometimes. The teachers have tried to impress upon her that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. The concept of wrapping things up and keeping things succinct and to the point has not sunk in. This does not bode well for a career as a newspaper copy editor.

Oh, there's also been a little bit of lethal flair to some of her stories lately. We're not worried, although we're watching it and definitely aren't encouraging it.

Tonight we were talking about dinosaurs. Here is her story that was the rambling preamble to my reading an actual bedtime book with Cat in the Hat and dinosaurs, given to Miss N by Hank and Nancy.

"One day, there was a T-Rex. I did a somersault and knocked out his tooth. Then I hit him in the eyes and he couldn't see. The T-Rex bumped into things and knocked out his other teeth and his claws. So I cut cut cut cut him up and we barbecued him."

Wow. Well, barbecue T-Rex probably would be good with Uncle Hans' meat rub on it.

"What did we serve with the barbecue T-Rex?" I ask.

"Rice, sugar, salt, apples and granola bars,"Chef Niranjana replied.

"What vegetables would we serve?" I query.

"Apples, I said," Chef snapped.

"And what would we drink with the barbecue T-Rex?" I ask, thinking Merlot sounded nice.

"Applesauce."

Andy thought a Thurston Wolfe Petite Sirah would be a good match.

So look out dinosaurs. Barbecue season is coming and Niranjana has a mean somersault.