Family conversation VI

If you have a five-litre jug and a three-litre jug, how do you get four litres? Or, if you take one set of parents and a 20-something who's returned to the nest, how do you get a book out of it?

T: "It's very fashionable to write books about one's parents these days. Everybody is doing it."
Pim: "I know, you told me the other day."
T: "I just thought I'd mention it again."
Pim: "If you wrote one about us, no one would read it; it would be boring."
T: "No, it wouldn't; it would be hilarious."
Pim: "I suppose you could put a different jug problem in italics at the beginning of each chapter."
Mim: "Don't encourage her!"

German highlights

In my German class, we have to use highlighters to mark the different nouns in our workbooks. Blue (blau) for masculine, pink (rosarot) for feminine, green (grün) for neutral and yellow (gelb) for plural. There is so much new to learn, but the familiarity of gender stereotyping is cold comfort.

And, although neons are making a fashionable comeback this season, I'm just not a highlighter kinda gal. Conceptually, I'm a fountain-pen princess. Realistically, I'm the chick scrawling last-minute notes with a chewed-down ball-point. Of course, "QWERTY" rules, although in this part of the world, make that "QWERTZ".