This is what I learned this weekend:
1) Do not, under any circumstances, give a small child a rather large cup of fantastic, intensely flavored, delicious, double dark chocolate gelato in the time between dinner and bedtime. You will regret it and want to call in an exorcist. Because what you might have forgotten about chocolate is that it has caffeine in it. I am sure that the lovely, intense dark chocolate gelato had, ah, more than the usual amount of caffeine than regular old chocolate ice cream. Your child weighs 27 pounds soaking wet. There could be some math involved here with grams of caffeine per pound of body weight, but it is not necessary, because res ipsa loquitor: the thing speaks for itself. Specifically, the thing ran almost all of the half mile home from the gelato shop. Then, when the thing was put to bed, it yelled, wailed, howled, begged, screeched, pleaded, thrashed, and kicked to be let out of bed. For an hour and a half. And then the thing also woke up at 1:00. 4:00 and 5:30 am, until the thing was hauled into Mama and Papa's bed in the faint hope of everyone getting more sleep.
The answer to this is obviously to administer the chocolate gelato at breakfast, when there is ample time for its effects to wear off before bed.
2) When hiding child bribery/Halloween candy, put it in a safe hiding place, where your children and husband will not find it. However, do not put it in so safe a place so that you completely out-think your own dumb-ass self, and then you cannot find the candy when it is desperately needed for life-saving bribery purposes. The same thing goes for hiding precious jewelry when going out of town. Popular places to hide such jewelry from the odd house thief are in a shoe box, or the toe of a winter boot.
The candy finally turned up stashed inside the corner cabinet tucked inside the salad spinner. The pearl necklace has not made a reappearance. I'm wondering if there are things like truffle pigs that could sniff out pearls?
3) Apples in your house are approximately 837 times larger and more numerous than they appear on the farm. Pick-your-own fruit places are fun weekend family outings. You get to be outdoors, where city children can run around a farm, pick apples, and see that they really do grow on trees and Mama was not making that crazy shit up. You're issued a basket, and you can take a wheelbarrow if you like, which is handy for hauling apple baskets, small children, etc. up and down the rows of apple trees. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, you're with good friends, the children have got the hang of this apple picking thing and are happily putting apples into baskets, and eating one here and there. You go up and down the rows, just getting a few of each kind that you want to try: Fuji, Honeycrisp, Jonagold. Your bucket doesn't look that full. You pet the farm animals, have a picnic, bag up your apples, and pay $12 for the privilege of hauling them home. You plan to make an apple pie for tonight, and imagine that will take care of a good number of the apples. When you carry the bag of apples inside, it seems much larger than it did on the farm or in the trunk of the car. The apples seem to have multiplied. Exponentially. You pick out six good looking pie candidates, and make your pie. The pie crust barely fits over the pile of apple slices in the pie pan. You wrestle the top crust into place, put it in the oven, and go back to inspect the sack of apples. It does not appear smaller since you removed six for the pie. You suspect it is actually larger. You realize that you also already had apples in the fridge, from the farmer's market, and that you are supposed to get more apples on Tuesday from your CSA.
You slice up an apple to accompany dinner. The small child refuses both the apple and the apple pie. You sigh, look up recipes for applesauce, store the apples in a cool, dark corner of the basement, and wonder if apples would go as fast as doughnuts if you put them in the kitchen at your office.
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