**Iris:** My favorite cheese is pancetta.

**Me:** That’s a meat. Do you mean cheddar?

**Iris:** Mama! My favorite cheese is pancheddar!

Iris and I were playing a recently-invented game called Funny Food. She has these little Japanese erasers in the shape of various food items, mostly desserts, and we disassemble and reassemble them in bizarre ways, like chocolate-covered French fries or three strawberries served in an empty French fry container (this is one of the new healthy sides at McDonald’s).

Anyway, Iris handed me a sandwich with the meat and lettuce on the outside and the bread in the middle. I pretended to eat it.

> **Iris (to Laurie):** Dada ate my architecture!

> **Me:** *uncontrollable laughter*

> **Iris:** Grrr!

> **Me:** *silence*

> **Iris:** Mama doesn’t think it’s funny either.

> **Laurie:** *uncontrollable laughter*

P.S.: Fans of K. Rool might want to check [this](http://kroolsblog.wordpress.com/) out.

For reasons that I can’t begin to explain, Iris and her cousin Kylie came to me and asked me to write a homework assignment with questions for someone studying to be a detective. The first question I came up with was:

**What is something red you would find at a crime scene?**

They took the worksheet down the hall and Kylie read the question. “Pepperoni!” said Iris.

“That’s my kind of crime scene,” said Iris’s uncle Scott.

Fortunately, the cousins discussed the matter and came up with a much more likely answer, which they scrawled on the sheet:

TOMATO.

I can also report that a detective’s favorite sandwich is PB&J, and that in a fight between a pirate and a detective, the pirate would win.

**Laurie (to me):** In another life, if you didn’t have us around, you might be eating Hot Pockets and playing rock music all day.

**Iris:** That’s what I will do!

Iris and I did a pirate story called Root Cellar Island, in which K. Rool and his crew find a secret cache of root vegetables under Iris’s bed. They roast them over an open fire, with the help of Iris (a good fairy).

> **K. Rool:** I have a question. What are you planning to do with that giant onion you wouldn’t let us eat?

> **Iris:** I was going to eat it myself. Or actually…

> SMASH.

> **Keelhaulin’ Katie:** Ow! Quick, let’s get out of here.

> **Iris (dropping Q-tips onto the ship):** Just then, 1800 rashers of bacon fell on their ship.

> **Matthew:** Wait, is that bad or good?

> **Iris:** Surprising.