Yes. Yes to Carrots™.

It is a truth indisputable that motherhood is spent mostly at the kitchen sink. From the first time you find yourself taking apart a breastpump to wash out all the fiddly bits to the afternoon you spend icing and scraping gum off the seat of your fifth-grader's pants, you can reckon the quality texture of your astonishingly lovely velcro hands has been well earned.

As well as your entertainment.

This afternoon, while washing up after feeding lunch to five kids (my three, as well as Fetish Ninja's two), SiKay took up her usual post beside me at the sink and kept me company with charming ~ albeit random ~ conversation. At one point, wearing only her fairy wings and ArJay's underwear with a cool print of a crab fossil on the butt, she cradled her cheek on one hand and softly asked,

"Mommy, where do carrots grow?"

"In the ground, Buns," I replied, all the while feeling my various guilt complexes catapulting out of their still-smoldering ashes and anxiously thinking, "Oh my gosh. Am I such a shit mom that my kids are so urbanized they have no idea where their vegetables come from? Fuck me!"

Out loud, however, I continued, "In gardens where they grow, there are these bright green poofy thingies shooting out of the ground, and when you pull them up, you get these awesome carrots that are covered with dirt, which you just wash off and eat!"

"Oh, Mom, I already know that!" she sighed with exasperation. "I meant, what climate do they grow in? Like in tropical or here? Do we live in a temperate climate, or is that just in Vancouver? Can they grow in tundra? Can anything grow in tundra?"

Tundra.

A few hours later, Fetish Ninja picked up her spawnlings, my neighbour came over with her knitting, and I bolted for a killer afternoon Pilates class with one of my most tyrannical and caustically-fabulous instructors. Afterwards, I schlepped my sore ass across the street to Ken's Market to see what treasures I could behold on their clearance shelves but there, lo and behold in pride of place on the premium displays, were sublime, iridescently orange organic carrots... with their beautiful, leafy fronds still attached! At $1.99 a bunch. There were five in each.

They were ours!

Foregoing a bag, I almost literally skipped home in my deep pleasure, clutching the stalks of my serendipitous babies and enjoying their brisk firmness. They were really quite large, and surprisingly heavy. Wait until SiKay saw. Friendly firemen smiled and waved. Old people stopped with their dogs to admire my fresh kill. Barrista friends shouted funny, nasty things about the sorts of antics you could get up to with root vegetables as I twirled a happy little dance with my carrots past their door, never-thee-minding the aghast looks on the faces of some appalled customers.

All was right in Greenwood.

Once I got home, I hid the carrots behind my back, found SiKay, got her to close her eyes and, brandishing them in front of her face, whispered for her to open them. Her look of agog delight was a blast.

As was our conversation as I went ~ yes ~ back to the sink to wash them up and get to work on making dinner.

"Mommy? Have you seen The Prince and the Pauper?"

"Yep, when I was a kid. I saw the black and white version while helping Uncle Bee build his Lego castle. That was a long time ago; even when I was a little, that movie was ancient. I also read the book, too, which was written over a hundred years ago. In fact, we have that copy upstairs on your bookshelf! It's a little paperback that was published sometime in the fifties; we're talking like sixty years ago. It was mine when I was growing up."

"Wow, you're old! What was it about?"

After recounting the story in its bleached and barest bones, my girl settled contentedly back onto her stool and, with a twinkly glow in her eye, said,

"Well, in Barbie's Princess and the Pauper, she switches places with another girl so she can have one last night of freedom and happiness before she has to get married. And then she has to marry a man."

I laughed so hard, I think I gave the dog a heart attack.

Such is the reward of the Scullery Queen.