This is a typical bedtime scene:

Julia (age 7 3/4): Can I have a song?

Me: Which one?

J: Met my old lover in the grocery store.

[my husband is apparently working his way through the entire 1970s singer-songwriter genre, a guilty pleasure of mine while driving, so I knew she meant Same Old Lang Syne]

I proceed to sing about old flames meeting at the Stop n Shop (they did NOT meet at Whole Foods), surprised to see each other in the frozen foods aisle (they did NOT fondle persimmons or gush about the organic produce on offer), reuniting over a six pack of beer (not microbrew, more like Miller Lite), the emptiness of time passages washing over them until the snow turns into raaaaiiiinnn.

Julia: [sings] We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to now…hey, this is a kind of a sad song actually.

Me: Yup, it is.

Julia: How come she says she’s not happy being married to the architect?

Me: Not every marriage is happy. [thinks we are about to have a segue into divorce or architecture but…]

Julia: Oh.  Is it true that a long time ago if you stole something, they would CUT. OFF. YOUR. HAND?

Me: [trying to reconfigure] Yeah, I think so.

Julia: Well, they wouldn’t know WHICH hand you used. So there.

So…there…you have to love the non-sequitors and segues and connect the dottedness of kid life…

And appreciate even more the recipes that will always hang together, no matter what you throw in.  Don’t like chicken? Do salmon or tofu.  Add different vegetables.  There are biscuits involved – how bad could it be?!