On an average day, my daughter’s question-to-declarative sentence ratio clocks in at a healthy 5:1. In this section of the blog, I explore what happens when instead of saying “I don’t know,” I say “Let’s find out!”
Last week, when The Eleven-Year-Old and I came home from school, we discovered our normally sleepy cat on high alert. Turns out there was an opossum in our backyard. “Oh no,” said my 11-year-old daughter. “Is it time to freak out?”
Thinking about composting your potentially E.coli infected romaine? Do me a favor. Don’t. At least not this time around. Here’s why.
On a recent roadtrip through Nevada, The Ten-Year-Old spotted a lot of vultures. So many she wanted to know: “Is the vulture the state bird of Nevada?”
Earlier this year, The Ten-Year-Old’s fifth grade class spent 18 hours learning what it meant to be sailors in 1906 as part of the Age of Sails program at the San Francisco Maritime National Park. Ever since then, she’s been reading everything she can get her hands on about life on the sea between the mid-1800s and early 1900s. After learning that the entire crew of the Franklin Expedition of 1845 died in one of that century’s greatest tragedies, the Ten-Year-Old naturally wanted to know why.
It’s Girl Scout cookie season, and that means we get to talk to all sorts of Girl Scout alums about their experience selling cookies back in the day. This week, we met someone who claimed that Thin Mints are not only one of the most popular types of Girl Scout cookies, they’re also one of the oldest. So of course, we had to know: Were Thin Mints really only the third Girl Scout cookie to be introduced?
Last Monday, while The Ten-Year-Old and I were walking to school, we passed a black bird standing in the middle of the road. “Look at that crow,” I said. “Or raven. Whatever. Look at that very large black bird sitting in the middle of the road daring cars to run over him.” “Mommyo,” my daughter asked. “Can’t you tell the difference between a raven and a crow?”
Yesterday’s Super Blue Blood Moon got The Ten-Year-Old wondering. Are there ever two new moons in one month? What’s that called?
In her book, Reading like a Writer, Francine Prose casually states that it’s bad luck to have peacock feathers in the house. I’d never heard that before. So of course, I wanted to know: do peacock feathers bring bad luck?
The holidays have finally struck here at Caterpickles Central. I wasn’t entirely sure it was going to happen this year, seeing as how there are still flowers blooming outside our front door, but I chaperoned The Ten-Year-Old’s field trip to see The Nutcracker last week, and now I’ve got questions about sugar plums dancing in my head. What is a sugar plum, and why does it get its own fairy?
One afternoon after a rough day at school, The Ten-Year-Old tried to calm herself down by picking Canelo up for a hug. He was having none of it. The Ten-Year-Old was disappointed when Canelo ran off instead of giving her the reassuring head-bonk she was looking for, but as always, her curiosity won out. “Mommyo, can cats smell stress?”
CATERPICKLES 