From the mouths of tweens

Well, from the mouth of a tween, anyway.

Kiddo and I were standing in line at the local pharmacy/grocery. A selection of medical equipment is displayed under the pharmacy windows, including a little forest of canes, the four-footed kind that stand on their own. One adjustable one was cranked all the way down, and was the right height for the four-feet-and-change kiddo. "Hey, look, a cane your size," I said, attempting to alleviate his boredom.

He took a few experimental steps with it, then stopped, gave it a moments thought, and shook it in the air, mock-shouting "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

The other incident is kind of telling on myself, but if you've read this blog for long you'll have figured it already.

Spring cleaning time, and I needed to deep-clean the kitchen, beginning with the countertop that had accumulated junk. (It's a deep countertop, with a breakfast bar on the far side, so it can accumulate a lot of junk). So I put a vinyl tablecloth on the dining room table, and began moving everything out of the kitchen, from the dishes waiting to be washed to the stack of baskets that in theory hold dishtowels and practice are the equivalent of our junk drawer. Then the collection of motley, mismatched Tupperware and Ziploc and Gladware and Rubbermaid stuff all came out, to be washed of dust accumulated while waiting for the matching lid or base to show up.

Even with the leaf folded in, the table's 48" square, so it was an impressive amount of stuff. Kiddo came home from school and was duly impressed by the cleanliness of the kitchen, at least, even though I hadn't gotten to things like the cabinet faces yet.

Next day, kiddo came home from school and observed that the kitchen counter now had a stack of dirty(ish) dishes on it: everything that hadn't fit in the first load of the dishwasher was waiting there, and it hadn't made an appreciable dent in the stack of stuff on the dining table. (I'm still not sure how all this stuff fit into my kitchen.)

He surveyed it all, and prophecied, "You're going to fill the counter up again, then move it all to the table with this stuff, then do it again, until the stuff on the table reaches the ceiling. Then it'll all avalanche down, and I'll come home from school and have to rescue you from all the stuff that's lying on your face trapping you."

Carl laughed to the point of tears when I relayed this to him. I'm not sure whether I should just proceed directly to tears, myself. Truth, kid. Truth.

(Be it noted, though, that the only thing still on the dining table right now is the basket stack, which contains oddities like: tea ball, kitchen scale, sushi mat, silicon cupcake liners [never get the faux-pleated kind, they don't come clean], Magic Eraser, crazy straws, and the duck coop thermometer display [the remote's still in the coop, where it's 43.9 degrees right now... good thing I waited to put the tomatoes out.])