The Queue: Soup Season

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and we slurp our way toward the answers.

Pretty decent. We seem to be turning the corner into Soup Season so I have a broccoli cheddar and a tomato basil on the schedule for this week.

It’s funny because I have been trying to find joy in the little things, like seeing a cool bird or having cut flowers in my dining room. Things like that can truly make my day, which has then made it so that the anticipation for soup — for soup — is making my whole week. And it feels weird because if I take half a step back it feels really stupid to be so excited about soup. It’s soup girl, get a grip. And yet, who cares if it’s stupid. Even if it is stupid, it’s a little ray of sunshine so who’s it hurting by not being cynical about it?

Anyway, I may make garlic bread too. We’ll see.

This is genius and I don’t know why I didn’t think about this as an extension of my ongoing quest for language learning, but here we are.

We have joro spiders so I’ve been ready for a while. It’s been 24/7 Halloween around my house for months. You know that scene in the horror movie where the heroine is running from the bad guy and she hits a spider web and it stretches but then she has some in her hair for the next few scenes? That’s literally me taking my kids to the bus stop every day.

No, really though, my personal favorite Halloween decoration is washable red acrylic paint. I get my hands all up in it, slap the windows from the inside a few times, maybe a few extra spatters, and we’re good. Maybe a red lightbulb in a low lamp to really set the mood. And then when we’re done, I just go for it with some windex, easy peasy.

I always give stuff out, and we always get just a few takers. I make sure to have a bucket of candy, but I also have a separate bucket of small toys, stuff like plastic fangs, play-doh, orange pencils, those braided fiber finger traps, stuff like that. That way, if the candy isn’t to their liking, or they have allergies, they can grab a toy instead. And the teachers love me, because anything that doesn’t get eaten gets donated to their “positive incentives” buckets.