The good news: after Janet and I spent the whole morning cleaning up Opal's room (which contained at least one object I swear I never saw before in my life), and then went to Ikea and then I scratched my legs up assembling a desk and a bookcase, Opal says her room is absolutely perfect. The bad news: This rendered her room SO EXCITING that it took her 3.5 hours to fall asleep. No ...

I told Opal that Janet and I were going to clean her room up tomorrow, make it all tidy. She took this in stride, and said, matter-of-factly, "And that will get rid of the wolves in the walls, too." (I maintain our walls are too narrow for wolves. This just causes her to mutter darkly that wolves are thinner than I think.) I kind of wish I was devious enough to use this as a lever ...

I told Opal we were having pizza with marshmallows and ants for dinner. "Don't be silly! People don't eat ants!" So, I did what any mother would do at breakfast; I broke out the YouTube video of Ray Mears eating honey ants. And witchety grubs. Opal was hypnotized. She suddenly had a new passion; Ray Mears videos. After school, we had to watch the honey ant one again. And then lots ...

We went to coffee, carrying with us 5 picture books and Jack Jones and the Pirate Curse. We got settled in, when one of the families we often see arrived; the 4 year old was clutching a copy of the Magic Treehouse Research Guide on Mummies and Pyramids. She and Opal settled into the same chair, and she said "This book is about mummies and tomb robbers. Do you know what ...

Opal and I went to the beach. We went to the local Pebble Beach, in Pescadero, which is actually officially part of Bean Hollow Beach. We'd never been before and we both thought it was a great beach -- if you park for the pebble part, you get a two-fer, pebbles on one side, and tide pools on the other. Opal adopted another family for the tide pools, and found crabs with great ...

It being a cold food kind of day, Opal and I went and bought fruit and we had tabouleh and cucumber salad and bratwurst for dinner. (OK, the bratwurst wasn't cold, but at least it didn't require much cooking.) While we were getting salad ingredients we also got a custard apple, a casaba melon, some nectarines and some olive bread -- you know, just enough fruit to survive until the ...

Opal has taking to asking what's for dinner and then saying "Yuck." (This has no correlation to her attitude towards the actual dinner.) So I've taken to telling her outrageous things. Boiled liver and mashed turnips, for instance. (Opal has tried liver, she didn't know she was supposed to hate it, and she loathed it passionately. She knows she is supposed to hate spinach, but ...

Opal informed us at dinner that soon, she is going to write her very own comic, and it is going to be about Supercat. Father Cat (I capitalize this because I think this is a Richard Scarry reference) is always going out and doing things while Mother Cat stays home with the kittens, which isn't fair, so Supercat is going to be a heroine, and Father Cat is going to have the kittens ...

Our worst moments today came with the best language. This morning Opal did not get to open the garage door, after an interaction she found unfair, and while she howled with fury I said to her "You feel cheated." She said, outraged, "I was NOT cheated. YOU cheated me." Ah, the importance of indicating agency.

After that, the day went calmly. We had dinner with friends and ...