Sambal

As we were leaving Calgary, C asked if we could watch Mulan when we got home.  I said, “sure” and everyone promptly forgot about it.   After we got home, we had dinner and did the usual evening things and then I sent the kids to bed.

At around 9:30 PM C came downstairs and reminded me that we hadn’t watched Mulan yet.

“It’s 9:30, I’m not going to start an hour-and-a-half long movie now; it would end at 11.”

Yelling, screaming, crying, mostly centered around “PUT THE MOVIE ON NOW!!!”

I didn’t want to physically put her to bed; I wanted to work.  I tried ignoring her for a few minutes but the noise-cancelling function couldn’t cope.  (Maybe I need a new battery.)

Finally I went up to her and said, “Do you want a candy?”

She stopped screaming.  She nodded.

I have a bag of wintergreen (Wint-O-Green, I suppose) life savers.  I gave her one.

She stopped crying.

“Did you know that when you crush these they make light?”  I crushed mine between my teeth – OW – chipped off a piece of enamel.

“I didn’t see anything, Daddy.”

We turned off the lights and tried again, with a nutcracker.  On the first try, life saver pieces scattered all over the floor.  On the second try, she saw the triboluminescence.

“Wow, Daddy!”  She ran upstairs.

Success!, I thought.

She came back downstairs with her brother in tow.  “F wants to see it too!”

“I don’t want to eat another one right now.   I hurt my tooth when I bit into that first one.  I’ll show you both another night.”  Disappointed, but mollified.  Two minutes later they both went back to bed and I got back to my work.

Today I found out that I did indeed chip the tooth, right through the enamel even, and I need to get it filled.

TOTALLY worth it.