What I learned Today

What I learned today:

If you consider tomatoes fruit, then you must also consider cucumbers, green beans, tree nuts, grains, squashes, peas, black pepper, and anything else that grows from a flower and contains seeds "fruit."  Technically, those are all the fruits of their plants.  And, by those rules, rhubarb is a vegetable. It turns out that the kindergarten definition of a "fruit" in common language is the right one: You know it when you see it. It's sweet and often juicy and you can eat it raw or cooked, but it's most often eaten raw. That other definition, the one that makes tomatoes fruit, is the botanical definition, not the common or the culinary definition. So it turns out that tomatoes are vegetables after all! It has to be true--the Supreme Court said tomatoes are vegetables way back in the 1880s. (I know--you're wondering why the US Supreme Court got involved. Well, it turns out if you pass a law that says you have to pay a tariff on vegetables but not fruits, suddenly everyone cares very much if tomatoes are vegetables or fruits). Oh, and pepper is still a fruit, no matter what definition you go by. It comes from a berry. Who knew?

What else I learned today:

If you take two rolls of paper towels, you can use over two dozen redecorating the bathroom and modifying the plumbing, and you still have enough left over to run them up and down the hall four times, down the stairs twice, down another hall twice, and across the family room six times. Just in case you ever wondered, you don't have to experiment on that. Nathanael tested it for you while I was nursing Elijah.

What else else I learned today:

Given the choice between candy (fruit snacks) and watermelon, Benji far and away prefers the watermelon.

Also:
A stick swing hung on a long rope from a tree can make a very large purple goose egg on a small boy's head when flung at the right angle by another small boy.

And:
There are actually kids who willingly take antibiotics. I thought they didn't exist, but, mercifully, I actually have one! In my own little family! Who would have guessed. They aren't mythical after all.