A slice of peanut-butter-and-pickle-sandwich life

I'm in the midst of getting Lucy ready for a three-week sleepaway summer camp, so the last few days have involved a lot of time standing at the ironing board pressing labels into everything she's packing.

I have been blogging about this kid since before she was born, and I'm on the cusp of her first trial flight from the nest. It makes me wistful ... and also hungry to write down what life with an almost 12-year-old is like. So here goes.

Lucy: Do you have to put my name in my underwear, too? 

Me: Yes. 

Lucy: That's embarrassing.

Me: Not as embarrassing as not having any underwear.

Lucy: Can we iron Alice's name into it instead?

Me: No. Everyone will want to know why you're wearing someone else's underwear. Just be glad your name isn't Theodore. Because then people would pick up your underwear and say, "The ODOR!" 

Lucy: I know what I am naming my first son.

And then there was last night. I've been sick and Adam was really tired when he got home from work, so we decided to go out for tacos. Lucy didn't want to join us, so we left her at home to fend for herself. While we were out, the phone rang. 

Lucy: Can I cook spaghetti?

Adam: NO. No cooking. You can make a sandwich.

After our quick dinner, we took Alice to her favorite ice cream shop and Adam accidentally pocket-dialed Lucy. When he sat in the car with his ice cream cone, we heard her voice. He removed the phone from his pocket and we put it on speaker and tried to figure out what she was talking about.

Alice said, "She's doing a cooking show." 

Alice was correct. Lucy, doing her recently acquired Southern accent, was indeed giving someone food-preparation instructions. (Most likely, that someone was our dog Graham, who finds Lucy fascinating and generous with the scraps.)

Adam and I started laughing. Lucy heard us and stopped her monologue. "Dad! How do I open the pickle jar?"

"With your hands," he said. "We'll be home soon." 

Lucy went back to her monologue while we listened and laughed.

Because Adam's cell phone measures the duration of calls, we now know that we are seven minutes and eight seconds from the ice cream shop. Lucy monologued the entire time.

When we got home, Adam opened the pickle jars and she was able to complete the construction of her dinner: a peanut butter and pickle sandwich with raisins and "a light dusting of cinnamon." She'd cut the crusts off, too. Because apparently, in that combination of food, the CRUSTS are the things that don't taste good. 

She had a grand time in our 45-minute absence. She tried on a good deal of perfume (and still smelled of it after her shower). She also put on a touch of mascara. We don't know quite how this happened, but she also managed to get two cherry-flavor Lifesavers stuck to her back. 

Clearly, this is a child ready to go out into the world. The question is, is the world ready for her?