It takes a village to survive. Some to remember the exact differences between safe, fun, and deadly mushrooms and others to turn predators into prey.

Ancient people had to remember/memorize a lot more things just to get through their days, before writing existed.

They don’t, not enough sodium in coconut juice for one thing.

I guess you first use the clean juice to make the wounded stop dying long enough so you can stitch what’s left of them together, and if they wake up you could tuck a salt pill under their tongue.

A lot of WWII was fought on Pacific islands.

You could pull them off without staining them if you drape them neatly over a clean chair. But then you’d be standing there trouserless (pants means undies over there) with Margot and Charlie…

I’d say Elizabeth Swaney is as close as you’ll come for winter Olympics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Swaney

Maybe more like, sat up and stuck its head down into the vase, which tipped, startling the cat, who pulled back, lifting the vase, and either thrashed its head or jumped down, either way the body of the vase broke away. It looks like it got lucky and there’s a relatively straight break line, but you wouldn’t want to pull in case you thrust a jagged shard into a jugular or something. They seem to be at the vet where they’ll administer enough anesthetic to either ease it off or break it away, then clean/stitch any cuts and dose it with antibiotics. If you couldn’t get to a vet, a couple people could probably wrap it in a towel and hold it still enough to break the vase away but it’s risky.

“Life is pain. Ovary up.”

High King Margo, The Magicians

Large animal veterinarian. I think my arms are too short.

SNIKT

That’s a legitimate use of “scratch” and since OP was being too cool to use the whole phrase “from scratch,” it could be re-interpreted to mean “I decided to throw out the whole meal and just eat a spoonful of peanut butter. What a waste of all my hard work!”

Like if they’d just opened their mail and in it was a notice: WARNING: MAJOR ARSENIC CONTAMINATION IN YOUR AREA! Injesting anything grown in your soil may cause severe illness and harm to vital organs!

This reminds us to be careful with phrasing.

From scratch is an idiom meaning “from the start” (as in a starting line scratched in the dirt for a footrace)

And in the context of food it means “cooked by myself from basic ingredients.” I don’t think OP means they grew the wheat, maybe not the jam berries, but they made the English muffin from dough using flour and yeast etc, not a mix and not store bought. They boiled up the jam from fresh fruit, and made the pectin to thicken it rather than buying pectin powder. They didn’t do all that tonight, in fact the elderberry mead started 6 years ago. And I bet it’s damn good!

You know, I actually have one of those pull-out ones and I almost never use it! It came with the home but it’s so big it doesn’t fit well in the sink to clean it.

With pull tabs you’d still need to hold the can down anyway.

My first thought: how’d you open the cans? But I guess you must have an electric can opener.

ESPECIALLY for toddlers!!

Personally I prefer to say, “What a beautiful toy you have! May I admire it?” and hand it back with “Thank you for the honor of holding your magnificent toy!” Or “seeing” if they didn’t let go of it.

Personally I prefer to say, “What a beautiful toy you have! May I admire it?” and hand it back with “Thank you for the honor of holding your magnificent toy!” Or “seeing” if they didn’t let go of it.

I once did a project with my 3rd graders where we looked at a bunch of poems and cartoons from The New Yorker and then they tried to do one of each. It seemed like almost all of the adult poems had death as a major theme, so I specifically told them something like “that’s a topic for old people, try to write about Life instead.” I sent them outside to look at something in “Nature” (well, a suburban school playground) and come up with a metaphor for their poem. The only rules for the cartoon were, one picture, one line, and both should be necessary. Humor preferred but optional, same for social commentary. They came out surprisingly well as a whole, and I bound them as “The Third Grader” for the class library.

Little correction: your 10 year old correctly wrote “come to an end” but you typed “come to and end”

Nice job on the poem, kid! I hope the death stuff is more hypothetical than from any tragedy in your life.

Nobody should be preparing food on an uncleaned counter in the first place. Or directly on the counter at all. Store your cutting boards vertically (I put them between the canisters and the wall) to keep all kinds of dirt off them. Cat or no cat, but especially if you have what’s essentially an inquisitive toddler who can leap 4+ feet and climb to the ceiling.