Rambling

First, because I know many people reading this will be interested, Stephen Sondheim was on Fresh Air Wednesday. Shows like this are the reason I love Fresh Air so much.

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Scene from Monday:

When picking K up from preschool, I was told that she hadn't been able to think of a "W" word for the letter of the week. Trying to lead her to a word, I asked her, "K, what do you put in the bathtub when you take a bath?"
"Toys!"
"Okay...but what do you wash with?"
"Soap!"
"And..."
"Shampoo!"

I finally had to whisper "water" to her so she could give it as her word. I suppose I should have asked her what puddles are made of, but I suspect she would have said "mud."

Speaking of school, I got a flyer yesterday saying that next week is Grandparents' Day, better known as "Special days that seem like a good idea except for the people who get it rubbed in their faces that they don't have as much family on hand as most people."

Have I ever mentioned that I grew up 1000 miles away from all of my grandparents? I could legitimately be accused of being a little sensitive on this subject. We were always able to dig up someone elderly from church to go for my brother and I, but the people I know best at church are a touch young to be asked to be a substitute grandparent. I just hate the thought that K gets to experience being left out of a special day at the tender age of four.

Ah well. K can focus on the fact that my mother is visiting in a little over a month. She's going to be at Oberlin Memorial Day weekend for her 50th college reunion (Five-O. My goodness. My mother doesn't seem that old). Anyway, since she'll be halfway here already, she thought she might as well come visit us. I'm not arguing. She really wants to take K to Sesame Place, which again, I'm not arguing. Sesame Place is one of those places where it seems a shame to have little kids and not go, but it's the most egregious example around here of the "price individual tickets so high it's only slightly more expensive to get a membership" pricing structure around here. It's annoying, because I don't have the time or money to belong to dozen museums, but there are plenty of places I'd like to go occasionally (as in, less than once a year) that I don't because it's just too expensive. Sesame Place would be $150 to take the entire family, so it's never been a remote possibility. But if my mother wants to pony up the money, I'm happy to let her. And I plan to try to convince her to put the money towards a membership so we have another place to go this summer.

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Now that I think of it, there was another conversation I had with K this week. It went along the lines of "It's fine if you want to get some mandarin oranges from the jar in the cabinet, but once you open it up, you really need to put it in the refrigerator." I'm not sure how long it sat in the cabinet merrily fermenting away, silent but deadly, but eventually I opened it up to get a palpable wave of vinegar and the sight of some rather unspeakable oranges floating in a fetid soup. Yum-o indeed. Occasionally, I'm secretly happy to discover a container is an unrecycleable plastic so I can guiltlessly toss it away without opening it up to clean it and getting personally acquainted with its rapidly evolving contents.

As I poured K's prison wine experiment down the sink, I found myself wondering if citrus is used as a base for wine. I know of alcoholic drinks where you add alcohol to orange juice (screwdriver, mimosa... and that's where my sad, tiny knowledge of alcohol dries up without additional research), but is it ever used as base for alcohol?