Why my kid is smarter than your kid

Seth had drumming class yesterday, which means that I didn't get home till 6;15 or so. I put a nice roast in the crock pot, then called Jill on the way home and asked her to peel some potatoes so that we could have some nice mashed potatoes (which I seem to mysteriously have figured out how to make to Thomas' satifsaction).

Got home, had lovely potatoes, and even though the crock pot had somehow turned off and left the meat rather are, I finished it off in the microwave and we had a nice, albeit very chewy, dinner. Thomas amazingly unloaded the dishwasher without being asked -- be still my heart -- and we started cleaning up, only to find that the kitchen sink was clogged. Running the disposal was no help, because everything just backed up into the other sink. Yuck. I couldn't figure out what the heck the problem was till Jill said "the only thing I put in it was potato peels." Well, there was the problem.

Back when we lived in an apartment, the maintenance guy told me that the #1 clogger of disposals is potato peels. He told me what #2 was, but I can't remember -- I think maybe onion peels, but I'm not sure. In either event, I'm pretty respectful of the disposal, and try not to put anything too iffy in it. I always peel my potatoes onto a newspaper or plastic bag, then throw them in the compost pile, and even though the kids have done the same, I don't know if they knew why, but they did, till yesterday.

Dan was getting rather grumpy about the whole thing, because the one time episode of peels in the disposal led to a night of plumbing that ended up with us having no kitchen sink or dishwasher to use. He groused about the fact that the kids should know better, till I pointed out to him that it took me till 28 years old to find out that you can't put potato peels in the disposal and, since Jill is 18, she's ten years ahead of the game. He didn't have a response to that.

That reminded me of another kitchen rule that she knows, that maybe not everyone does: don't put dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher. Now, it might make seem to some that you can put Dawn in a dishwasher, but let me give you a clue: dishwashing liquid means someONE is washing dishes. Dishwasher liquid means someTHING is washing them.

Jill put Dawn in the dishwasher one time when she was about ten. Next thing you know, she's screaming, so I went running into the kitchen, thinking someone was dying. Well, she might've thought that she was heading toward a quick death, because the bubbles had already made it halfway across the kitchen floor, with no sign of letting up. Turning off the dishwasher was no help, because there's no way to get them out once they've started. Jill was looking rather panicstricken -- that look a little kid gets when they know that they are in real trouble -- when I just picked up a big handful of the bubbles and threw it at her. This turned into a melee of bubbles flying that only stopped briefly when Dan walked into the room to see what all the laughing was about. He just stopped, looked, and left the room without ever saying a word, while we went back to our own tamer version of Girls Gone Wild.

I didn't have to wash the kitchen floor for a month.

So yeah, my kid is smarter than your kid, cause she knows 1) not to put potato peels in the disposal, and 2) not to put Dawn in the dishwasher. Of course, she also knows how to do her own laundry correctly, how to saddle a horse, how to train a dog to do about a dozen tricks, how to plant bulbs, how to parallel park WELL, and how to bake some wildly delicious chocolate chip cookies, so all in all. That's just a sample of her talents. Like the apron pictured above. Click the image to shop, cause I've gotta pay the plumber somehow.