Tales from the Steppes

2005-08-09

8:38 a.m.
Tuesday, August 9

Summer doesn't feel the coming frost
And she doesn't yield to pain or loss
- Great Big Sea

Saturday I took the EM and YM blackberry picking at a local farm. The YM was bored in a matter of minutes but he managed to amuse himself by making up stories and lying on his back pretending he was a dead bug. The EM did a good job of picking berries and spent quite a lot of time telling me about the various soap operas going on with her friends. Fortunately, my responses can be mostly confined to wordless grunts to show that I am actually listening. My filters are set for anything that might be a cause for concern but otherwise I just let the words wash over me.

After blackberry picking, we went over to the outlet mall to do some back to school shoe shopping and had excellent hunting. I am not a big "shoe person" but even I found a couple of pairs of nice work shoes for an amount of money I was willing to pay. The YM got a pair of school shoes for kindergarten - bright blue suede and yellow and the EM got a couple of pairs as well.

I have been quite impressed with the EM's shopping skills of late. Sure, I still want to gnaw an arm off after being at the Limited II for an hour or so, but I have found that the reason she takes so long is that she is carefully looking for non-tacky clothes. She has learned not to ask me for things that aren't going to pass my inspection and to shop intentionally, not impulsively. Hence it takes a long time. So it was that we went from store to store looking for reasonable school shoes. Since she wears a womens 8 1/2, that leaves out the children's stores so we have to find adult shoes with low enough heels.

(This really is going somewhere, though I guess I could have just mentioned that we bought shoes and left it at that. But really, the shoe shopping is an important element here.)

Ok, so at home later that night, I see the YM in the kitchen with a cup of liquid, stirring it up. There is some grainy stuff at the bottom of the cup, so I assumed it was Koolaid he had just added extra sugar to. I confiscate the cup and prepare to give him my lecture on the Evils of Excess Sugar, as the YM is so not a child that needs any help with liveliness. But then I notice that the granules are multicolored, some brown, some tan. So I ask him what this stuff is. Why it's the little packet of stuff that came with his shoes. You know, the packet that says it's poison. I guess he thought it was like opening a new box of cereal or Cracker Jacks - sometimes you get a little prize. We had a little chat about eating things that are of unknown origin and maybe he should ask an adult. And look, this is yet another reason to learn to read. His reaction to the words "poison" and "death" were not very reassuring so I moved on to the words "hospital" and "pump your stomach out", which seemed to reach him a little more.

After this excitement, I went to look for all the pairs of shoes and remove all the little packets. The EM had opened a bunch of the boxes and I was unable to account for at least one packet per shoe pair. Well, ok. Maybe some of the shoes came without prizes.

However, the dog did not poop for 36 hours, which is quite unusual. Coincedence or Darwinism? I don't know.