Today, the tired hits.

Yeah. Okay. 16.5 followed by 11 followed by 4 followed by 10.5 is... a lot. Especially a lot of standing.

Today was the first day of school. Charlotte starting fourth grade. Went to the whole parents' assembly ting, because it was my day off and I could. Spent a little time observing new trends in backpacks -- the girls all seem to have ones with little zippered cases that clip to the outside. This seems very insecure if it's meant to be a coin purse. I certainly hope that for fourth graders it's not meant to be a makeup case. Charlotte has a Tweety Bird backpack that would have looked pretty much in step with everyone else's, but she used it as her camp backpack and now she doesn't want to use it because it smells mildewy, and she has a purple and pink wheelie-backpack that was much more last year's trend, and she said she wasn't using that becausse she hadn't cleaned the papers out of it (scary, how much she's my kid) so she voluntarily went with my batik-fish-print one, the one that came with a matching swimsuit and sarong and hatband on a straw hat lo these many years ago. Well, it won't be mistaken for anyone else's.

She brought Jane Austen's Emma for independent reading. Her choice, I swear... I'd let her watch the A&E version of it the other day, and she WANTED to read the book. Heh. Probably entranced by the pretty period dresses. So my kid.

I was almost willing to drink the crap coffee at the assembly, until I saw that they only had powdered creamer. Um, no. There are depths to which I will not sink.

So we went by work so I could use my fringe benefit of Free Coffee For Employees, Even If You're Not On Shift. Yay, assuaging the caffeine addiction. The quiche I'd made yesterday for a special order was in the deli case. WTF? Did she cancel her order? I double checked. The boss had misread the slip and thought the order was for yesterday. I rescued the quiche and stuck it in the back. Then shadowflyer and I split a piece of the almond coffee cake I made yesterday. Frangipane is still one of humanity's great inventions. I was perfectly willing (as per policy) to pay for the thing, at employee discount, and so offered, but it was waved away.

Spent the rest of the day vegetating in front of the computer. Did some chat RP for via_serpens, but nothing else productive.

Charlotte announced at dinner that she wanted to be a vegetarian. Um, right, this from the kid who pretty much only likes plain unadorned animal protein? Since shadowflyer had cooked a kielbasa thing we eat often (and she likes, dammit), I offered her some leftover white-bean salad as an alternative. She actually liked it, except for the artichokes -- hooray, my lemon-garlic vinaigrette -- but it was apparently starting to ferment a bit, so we had to toss it. As she is a notoriously fussy eater, I hit upon the idea of setting her to read through several vegetarian cookbooks of mine, and flag recipes that she thought she'd like to try, so we wouldn't waste time making things she thought sounded horrible.

This should be an interesting year.

Had to go to the grocery store...

to pick up potatoes and onions because guess who hasn't been cooking at home and so hadn't noticed they'd gone icky.

While I was there, I glanced down the aisle with the summer merchandise. I was a GOOD GIRL and did not buy the snow cone maker. Although I love snow cones. Cherry snow cones. And, you know, snow cones at home could have BOOZE in them, and that would be really good.

I also spotted a one-quart electric ice cream maker for $29.99.

I found myself thinking, "I wonder if the boss would let me get one for the store?"

*smacks self*