When I was small and my little brother even smaller, he ate some thyroid pills my grandmother had left out on a counter at her house. We got to watch him get his stomach pumped at the hospital, through a tube stuck down his nose. A nun spoke to me, which was a bit frightening as I wasn’t used to nuns.

So I should have expected this to happen: I left my Irish traditional music CDs out and now Gamma has discovered her love for traditional Irish music. No more Xtina or Shakira for her. There’s a stack of CDs of jigs and reels and slow airs in the kitchen now, next to the CD player.

I come home rather late from work nowadays so it’s mostly over by the time I get home, but sometimes Alpha is still hanging from the ceiling by her finger- and toenails. The only mitigating detail in this for Alpha is that Gamma seems to have good taste, and plays the better-quality stuff.