Ok, another thing I love about Canada is that all products are labeled both in English and in French. It is such a small detail, but it’s like language study all day long. It takes me twice as long at the grocery store because I am reading both labels just for the novelty. I am standing in the store saying the words to myself and just marveling at the fact that there are two languages on everything. Look that says, “beurre!” Hey, that means butter in French. (I am hard up for entertainment, apparently.)

The double labeling has gotten me in to trouble a few times though, like yesterday morning when Cole was fixing bagels for everyone (so I could keep sitting in my chair reading), all of a sudden he said, There is something wrong with this cream cheese! It doesn’t taste right. I barely glanced up from my book to say something like, Too bad. It’s Canadian cream cheese. It was all they had at the store. You’re just going to have to flex. Be grateful you have something to eat, etc. To which he threw down the knife, passed his bagel to Simon and marched out saying, I was REALLY looking forward to those bagels this morning. I responded with all kinds of grace again about just being grateful for having something to eat at all and about the 40000+ people who will DIE today because they don’t have enough to eat so I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT IT!! DO YOU HEAR ME?? Not to mention that he was beginning to poison all the other children’s minds about the Canadian cream cheese that they had not even yet tasted. I never got up from my seat though. I just kept reading. Then, LATER, as I was cleaning up breakfast and putting away the cream cheese, I realized that the problem was not that the cream cheese was Canadian nor that it was organic. It was garden vegetable. Apparently, in reading the French label, I had just been so enchanted with the word “jardin” that I had neglected to notice that the cream cheese was not the usual plain variety that my kids are used to eating. Oh well. I do so love the way the word garden sounds in French. Tant pis about breakfast!