Here’s a riddle for you.

August 25, 2007 – 9:17 pm |

I’ve noticed some bloggers like to post trivia questions, puzzles, tricky math problems and the like. Math has never been my best subject, but here’s my offering to the genre.

Take a [relatively] normal suburban family of five.

Subtract dad (send him, oh, say, on a corporate environmental awareness building exercise to the northern recesses of Canada.)

Next, subtract his cell phone and Blackberry service

Multiply that by nine days.

Immediately before he leaves put mom in a 6.2 mile practice run for “The Race” … with a chest cold … in the rain.

Subtract mom’s ability to move her legs … and breathe.

To the tornado toddler add a case of strep throat, subtract 48 hours worth of sleep and ramp up the “no-momma-I-no-gonnas” by an exponential power of he’s two.

Send in one grandma on loan from her home afar. Add an arthritic flare up in her back and subtract her ability to extend her arms above shoulder height.

Take the princess preschooler and add a fever, stuffy nose, upper respiratory problems, a sore throat and multiply by several gallons of whiny. (But not, apparently, the streptococcus bacteria. Just for fun, be sure to give her the rapid strep test anyway so that you can add in a few choruses of “you said they wouldn’t stick that thing in my throat”).

Subtract more sleep.

Add one online work project (due Friday).

Subtract an Internet connection (is it road construction? is it weather? is it just me? They don’t know).

Multiply by THREE DAYS.

Measure in a six year old’s birthday and add a new remote control robot from the aforementioned grandma. Give the robot the ability to do all kinds of things, including burp loudly.

Now, subtract the instructions. (But don’t worry, even though the six year old won’t be able to do much with it, he’ll remember how to make it burp. Loudly.)

Finally, add 6 days of straight, non-stop rain and subtract the ability to go outside.

So what do you get? Is it:
a) Pity. Party of One.
b) The explanation for my bloggy drought
c) Justification for the huge piece of chocolate cake I’m about to eat
OR
d) All of the above.