offended by picking a few seeds out of a slice of bread."

"Mom, picking them out doesn't help. The taste is still there!"

"Scouring pads... chicken breasts..." Her mom gnawed reflectively on the cap of the pen. "Shampoo, aspirin, soup "

"Not the cream-of-chemical kind, Mom!"

"Half a dozen cans of nonchemical soup for the budding gourmet." Her mother looked vague for a moment, then glanced over at what Nita was writing. She

squinted a little. "Either I really do need reading glasses or you're doing math at a much higher level than I thought."

Nita sighed. "No, Mom, it's the Speech. It has some expressions in common with calculus, but they're " "What about your homework "

"I finished it at school so I wouldn't keep getting interrupted in the middle of it, like I am here!" "Oh dear," her mother said, peeling off another

note and starting to write on it. "No seedless rye for you." Nita immediately felt embarrassed. "Mom, I'm sorry "

"We all have stress, honey, but we don't have to snap at each other." The back door creaked open, and Nita's father came in and went to the sink.

Nita's mother glanced up. "Harry, I thought you said you were going to oil that thing. It's driving me nuts."

"We're out of oil," Nita's father said as he washed his hands. "Oil," her mother said, and jotted it down on the sticky note. "What else "

Her father picked up a dish towel and stood behind her mother's chair, looking down at the shopping list. "Lint " he said.

This time her mother squinted at the notepaper. "That's 'list.'"

"Could have fooled me."

Nita's mom bent closer to the paper. "I see your point. I guess I really should go see the optometrist."