Phoebe started calling it the bubbly water, which was confusing because the kids have also taken a liking to sparkling water, which is also (actually) bubbly. When we pointed this out to her she started saying, "Pass the bubble solution!"
So that's fun (and funny)!
*****
The watermelon that we've been getting is grown in Oman. It's the oblong, seed-filled original and it's so flavourful. The kids aren't impressed with how many seeds there are, but I told them that's the tradeoff for such a good-tasting watermelon.
Seedless watermelon seems to have entirely taken over the United States. Apparently only 16% of watermelon sold in the US has seeds (whereas in 2003 it was around 43%). And seeded watermelon tastes so much better (in my heart, okay...because apparently they taste the same...but I just don't know about that).
100% of the watermelon we've seen here is fully seeded. That doesn't mean they don't have seedless watermelon. It just means...we don't know where to find it (and it's probably expensive).
I taught the kids "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor" and that helped get them excited about the seeds. That and the idea of spitting them out like a machine gun.
Zoë asked how they get the seeds out of the fruit (watermelon, oranges, grapes, you name it—we encounter seeds here a lot more often than we ever did in the states), so we explained that it was mainly through genetic engineering (crossbreeding to create small, infertile seeds). She had been under the impression that they were somehow deseeded in their growing process—cracked open, seeds harvested—and couldn't quite figure out how the fruit became whole again after such an invasive procedure. But, no...the deseeding happens in the genetic code before the fruit even grows.
*****
We made a pistachio cake for Andrew's birthday, straight from a boxed cakemix.
Our kitchen is small, we are not set up for from-scratch baking yet, and life has been chaotic. But we did manage to make him a cake and we were proud of it, even if it wasn't quite as tasty as we imagined it was going to be. It was just a little denser than we thought—perhaps because I hand-mixed it so it wasn't fluffy enough...
It just was, like, a bog-standard cake mix cake.
Since we had been shopping at IKEA on his birthday, we stopped at the little cafe for a sharwarma dinner and as a treat he got everyone a glass of mint lemonade as well, which is very green.
And then we had the green pistachio cake.
And then we were getting ready for bed and...I mean...our nightly "waters" were...alarming.
At least to me.
I broached the topic as delicately as I could.
"Uh...so...I just wanted to raise a concern about my...pee..." I said awkwardly.
"Was it a weird colour?" Andrew asked, way more invested in the conversation than I thought he would be.
"Yeah," I said. "It's like...bright...neon...green."
"MINE TOO!"
We puzzled about it for a minute and he figured it was the lemonade. But that hardly made sense because we've had mint lemonade before and it didn't turn our pee green. Plus, human bodies break down chlorophyll quite easily, so it's unlikely to turn anything green...
"It must be the cake," I hypothesized.
"The cake isn't even that green!" he argued.
In the morning we talked to children, who had all been quietly worrying about their pee colour, both about why they shouldn't be too concerned about their verdant output and also that they can voice such concerns to their parents rather than quietly worrying. And by mid-morning we were just about back to normal.
We went to the library to try to attend English storytime (but were five minutes late and barred from entering because it was past the start time and they don't allow late patrons in...never mind the fact that Arabic storytime is a free for all...we were five minutes late to that today and they hadn't even begun yet...I do not understand why this is) and then just hung out doing schoolwork for a bit before returning home for lunch and afternoon work.
We had leftover sandwiches (from the service project) and leftover cake (from Daddy's birthday) and pretty soon...our pee was back to neon green.
Which is funny because the cake isn't remotely neon green itself—it's pistachio green.
But, here we are...with neon green pee...
We're just about back to normal again, but I don't think we'll be plopping that particular cake mix into our shopping cart any time soon!
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