One fine day

Sometimes at bedtime, I like to ask Ben what his favorite part of the day was. Today, he listed four things:

• Crosswords—seeing me on TV.


• Grammy—my mom came up to the city to watch the game show with us.


• The assembly—he found out that we're invited to the school's awards assembly on Friday. (I think he's getting perfect attendance, and that his two January tardies didn't count against that. He was on the honor roll in the first quarter, but not for the second quarter that just ended.)


• The ISAT—Ben's class is beginning to practice for the ISAT standardized tests. (Thanks, No Child Left Behind, for making teachers teach to the test!) Bless this child, he truly enjoyed the test! He finished too quickly, apparently, and had to read his chapter book while waiting for his classmates to catch up.
  

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Yesterday, Peapod delivered my grocery order. While putting the food away, I encountered a rogue container of cottage cheese. I seldom buy cottage cheese and when I do, the 24-ounce tub is far too big.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When life gives you a bucket of cottage cheese, make sweet cheese pie.

It tastes sort of like cheesecake, sort of like flan. And everyone in the house thinks it's yummy. Why, you might even acquire cottage cheese on purpose to make this.

In my head, I was making this for my dinner last night. Yes, the recipe says it serves 6 to 8 for dessert. Yes, the words sweet and pie are in the very name. But it has cheese! And eggs! And milk! That's good for me, right? Calcium, protein, vitamin D? Yep. Good for me.

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The other day, Ben was drinking milk and burping. Apropos of nothing save his own burps, he announced: "When Dad burps, it smells like beer. When you burp, it smells like Coke. They both smell horrible." Gawd, I love that kid! He now says he's the Crackmaster 3000 because he's always cracking people up.