The Caterpillar had a special visitor at her preschool yesterday for the upcoming Halloween Harvest Festival holiday. Has anyone else noticed the disparity of calling this holiday the "Harvest Festival" or some other made-up-holiday-name so as to not to offend anyone who doesn't celebrate Halloween and then asking children to come to this NotHalloween Party dressed in costume with bags so they can trick-or-treat?

Just me?

OK then.

Anyway, The Caterpillar's school has had some.... let's call it difficulty... following through on some of the activities they've planned and made a big deal about to the parents over the past few months. Even for my normally easy-going self (I'll pause to let the hilarity of that statement sink in), it's been an issue - especially since they raised their tuition this fall and I'm still not really down with that as a reflection of the services they offer my kid. Since this particular event required a additional $10 fee, and when I found out that they would only take cash for this $10 fee, and after I had to rummage around in the bottom of my purse and then crawl under the seats of the car to put together $10 in nickels, pennies and one gum-and-hair-covered coin I'm hoping was a dime, I wanted to be sure I got my money's worth she got to experience what I'm sure was a lovely planned activity for the fall season.

So when she came home, I peppered her with questions basically designed to ascertain whether today was a ten-additional-dollars-a-kid-worthy kind of day.

Me: "What did you do?"

C: "Went to school."

Me: "Yes, but what did you do in school?"

C: "Played."

Me: "Did you do anything special?"

C: "Uh huh."

Me: "What was that?"

C: "Had fun."

Me: "Anything else?"

C: "Ate."

Me: "Yes, but did you have a special visitor from the pumpkin patch?"

C: "Yes."

Me: "What was he like?"

C: "He wore pants and a shirt."

Me: "Well, thank goodness for that. I know how often *I* forget to wear pants and a shirt. Did he bring pumpkins?" (I'll take a moment here to point out that she had not come home with a pumpkin, though we'd expected her to do so.)

C: "Yes."

Me: "Where's yours?"

C: "In my cubby."

Me: "Honey, I didn't see a pumpkin in your cubby. I didn't see pumpkins anywhere in your room."

C: "Ummm... I don't know."

Me: "Well, what else did he do?"

C: "Nothing."

Me: "You had a visitor come all the way to your school, WEARING PANTS AND A SHIRT AND EVERYTHING... and he didn't say ANYTHING to you? What'd he do, just stare at the wall?"

C: "He said something."

Me: "What did he say?"

C: "He said, 'Do you teachers have a marker?'"

Me: .....

KoH: "I got this. What did he do with the marker, baby?"

C: "He put it in his pocket."

Personally, I feel pleased and proud we got that much out of her.

Also: I believe I'm going to start employing this strategy of item acquisition. I'll just walk up to random people and say, "Do you have a pen/stapler/jack stand I can use to change a tire?" then put the item in my pocket and walk off. Genius.