Overheard, Rose to Jane: "You know why I wouldn’t want to be Supergirl? She can never get her ears pierced!"
(Later, they decided that exposure to Red Kryptonite, just long enough for a needle to pierce the earlobe, would solve the problem—in its presence, Supergirl loses her invulnerability. Such are the weighty topics we discuss over Sunday dinner.)
"Mommy, do you know why you will always survive a shark attack?"
"Ooh, why?"
"Because you never get in the water. You always stay on the towel with the babies."
I guess I can’t argue with that.
Beanie said to me tonight, "Did you know I saw a moose at the park today?"
Me: "A moose? Really."
Bean: "I think so. It was big like a moose, and it had a moose’s tail."
(Because, you know, a moose’s tail is its distinguishing characteristic.)
Bean, continuing: "But it was a long way away."
Me: "Like, say, in Maine?"
Beanie (laughs): "No, Mommy, at the park. Here."
Me: "Ah, yes. You said that. Here. In San Diego. A moose. How did I miss it?"
Bean: "You were at the swings. I saw it from the climby thing. It might have been a dog. But I’m pretty sure it was a moose."
Me: "Well."
Bean: "Or…it could have been a person."
Hmm. Could it be that we are not quite the astute observers of nature I had supposed we were? I mean, there I was all proud of myself for identifying a viceroy butterfly on a eucalyptus tree, and I completely missed seeing the large dog-man with the tail of a moose.
A tiger? In Africa?
Beanie, on the subject of Oscar Mayer weiners: "Are they named after Oscar Wilde?"
Ramona just added another eight years to my life.
If I were to make one of her mom’s Thanksgiving centerpieces, I’d have to put Ramona’s picture there for sure, right next to my Beanie’s. Between the two of them, I could live another three hundred years.
"What if God really made a Great Pumpkin? What do you think he would look like?"
Comments are off
"Mom, can you buy me a bow and arrow? I need one."
I’m washing dishes, and I pick up a spoon that looks, at first half-attending glance, like it’s covered with applesauce. I begin to wipe it off in my sudsy water, but it isn’t applesauce after all; it’s gooey and greasy and clings to my fingers, rather like…Vaseline?
"What’s on this spoon?" I ask the three girls at at the breakfast table.
"Vaseline," confirms Rose, all nonchalance.
"And why, may I ask?"
She is matter of fact, as if anyone with sense ought to have known without asking. "I was playing Rowan of Rin
Well, okay then.
(*Technically, I think the Death Sleep bit comes into Rowan and the Keeper of the Crystal
(I miss the old covers, the ones with young Rowan on them.)
Why do mother opossums dread rainy days?
Because the children have to play inside!
Heh.