Dinner table conversation

I was originally planning to show you my most recently completed spinning project, but since I worked for two hours plying said spinning project and it is still not done, that will have to wait. It is a lot more yarn than I thought it was. 

Instead, I deliver to you excerpts from tonight's dinner conversation, though most of it is not verbatim.

At one point, K. said something that was mildly annoying and a sister identified it as a quote from Peter Fox in the comic strip, Fox Trot. (If you are looking for Fox Trot compilations at our local library, don't bother. They are all at my house.) I suggested that if K. was going to channel Peter Fox on a regular basis, that perhaps the Fox Trot books needed to be returned. J. added that channeling the father or Jason wasn't such a tremendous idea either. Someone threw out that maybe K. could channel Paige. Clearly K. doesn't pay any attention to that particular character since he wanted to know what he would need to do if he did channel Paige. I said shop and talk on the phone. K. was quick to jump in with his total ability to talk on the phone to his friends if only he had a phone. I then felt compelled to apologize for his stunted and impoverished adolescence as a result of not providing him with his own phone. G. then added that she thought it was the young teens who did have phones who were stunted and impoverished. (No, I did not prompt her to say that.) 

The conversation moved on. 

The next topic I remember was me commenting that we didn't read at teatime today because we had finished Jules Verne and the book I was planning on reading hadn't yet arrived at the library. Someone wanted to know the name of the book, so I told them, The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland. G. asked if circumnavigated meant went all the way around, and L. added that she never pictured Fairyland as a sphere, but flat. I said you could still circumnavigate a flat square by going around the perimeter. L. then informed me that she hated math. (Points for her knowing that perimeter is a geometry term, right?)

Later Y. was caught unawares by something funny and spit milk out of her mouth. It took her a while to regain her composure, and I'm still not sure what was funny enough to prompt the giggles. 

Out of the blue, K. felt compelled to sing, "What does the fox say?" (I'm sorry that it is now in your head, too. I blame K.)

I'm sure at multiple points someone had to get up to run into the kitchen to make sure the cats weren't getting into trouble. There were also the nightly negotiations of who was going to eat the leftovers on someone's plate. (There are usually more than one taker, so there is some negotiation which goes on.) The inevitable question of is there dessert (there was, G. had made cookies) and questions of whether someone could be excused at the end of dinner. All in all, a pretty normal dinner for us.

Well, sort of normal. I have been informed by older children that they can find it difficult to know what is  and is not appropriate dinner conversation when around non-family members. The thing which was unusual about tonight's dinner is that the topics were all pretty benign. I cannot tell you how many times parasites or ghastly wounds or medical procedures or something along those lines has been a topic of conversation. We truly do not think anything about it. It appears, as my children have discovered, that other people do. If you ever come do dinner at my house, you have been forwarned.