Cereal filler.

Doing a Whole Foods run to equip the kitchen, I also load up on my favorite breakfast cereal, a nutritious blend of kamut, spelt, and quinoa, which doesn't taste like an Ikea tabletop and which, combined with say banana slices, blueberries, and blackberries and a sprinkling of toasted wheatgerm is the perfect way to start the day, unless of course there's cold mushroom pizza in the fridge.

When Tertius was in nursery school, he dictated the captions for a clutch of his drawings that were bound into a book and presented to me for Fathers Day. It all seemed a pretty accurate assessment, until it got to my favorite food. His teacher had transcribed that I "like to eat Harry T. Jones."

More recent portraits of me by Tertius.

A little distracted by the homoerotic overtones of this observation, I protested that I didn't know anyone called Harry T. Jones even to talk to, let alone, well . . . (The nearest name in my experience was "F. Harry Stowe," which isn't a person but the way to pronounce the Greek word for "thank you." Benefits of a classical education, which I freely bestow on you, dear reader. Oh, you're welcome.)

It took me a while to realize that Tertius had quite accurately offered up the name of this Cheerios-shaped breakfast cereal. It's called  "Heritage O's."