Dirt Cheap Ice Cream

          Ice cream is ruined.  At least soft  serve ice cream and at least for me.  I walk into the house the other day and my son says, “Oh, enjoying your clay?”

          This is where my eyebrows lower and I stare at him, waiting for the explanation that is going to forever spoil my fun.  The same exact thing happened with Pluto not being a planet.

          I look down at my vanilla soft serve in a cone, and say, “This is ice cream.”

          “No it isn’t,” he says.  “That’s why they call it Soft Serve.  They can’t call it ice cream.”

          WHAAAT? 

          “It’s made with bentonite,” he tells me.  This kid should never have gone on that volcano study to Hawaii, where he became entirely too smart for his britches.

          “Bentonite sounds like an ingredient in linoleum,” I say.  “Like a plastic or something.”  And suddenly my treat seems a little too airy, a little too smooth.

          “They put it in milkshakes, too,” Richie says, completely comfortable with his role as Bearer of Bad News.  “It’s a clay made from chemically weathered volcanic ash.  But it’s totally edible—they use it as a filler.”

          Like sawdust?  Like feathers?  I’m eating ashes?

          He goes on to tell me it’s sold in health food stores and is completely safe, even added to baths for its healing properties.

          I don’t care.  I look it up and all I can see are examples of cat litter and mud drilling. 

          And it’s clay.  When I wanted ice cream.  I’ll tell you this.  No way am I eating cheesecake or truffles or donuts around that guy. 

Have you visited my website, lately?  No filler whatsoever.  Just a bunch of cool stuff like a music video, YouTube Mom videos, and tons of books you can buy!