For Harsh Betty

6:40am. CJ is in the kitchen, making himself an omelet. I am in Meredith's room, digging through the six-inch-deep layer of books, clothes, toys, shoes, and who the hell knows what which always covers her floor, attempting to locate something she's lost. Which: I don't even remember what it was, but she was wailing about it.

My right pinkie finger ever-so-gently brushes against a small tackle box. Not even enough of an impact to register as "I've touched something", but enough to knock the tackle box from its precarious position, which happens to be " completely open and balanced atop one shoe and maybe a barbie head". The box is, of course, full of loose beads that scatter absolutely everywhere, far and wide. There are probably some at your house, in California, that's how many of them there are and that's how big of a more-mess they made. OMG.

So, during the course of the room-mess-digging, CJ yells "Mom? Mom? Mom?" from the kitchen. He never comes to locate and then speak to me, no, he just yells my name until he finds me or I appear. I yell back, "JUST A MINUTE!" and finish explaining to Meredith just how much she will be cleaning her room before she is ever allowed to go anywhere ever again.

I exit her room, and join CJ in the kitchen, where I see that he has extracted a single-serving-size package of cheese cubes from its bag and is attempting to mince the cubes with a steak knife so that it will approximate shredded cheese, and then he intends to add it to his omelet.

Let me take a moment to point out that child had to actually move shredded cheese and sliced cheese out of the way to obtain the single-serving-size-snack-pack-bought-for-his-godforsaken-camp-lunches-which-you-may-have-read-about-on-this here-blog cheese. He informs me that had I appeared when he demanded it to be so, he would have been able to ask me about appropriate cheese, but I didn't, so he was forced to use the only cheese he could possibly find: The snack packs.

I refer you to "child had to actually move the shredded cheese and sliced cheese out of the way".

I would like to add: OH NO HE DI'IN. But oh, yes, he did.

The top of my skull removes itself from my head. "THAT IS NOT AN INGREDIENT, THAT IS A SNACK!"* comes flying out of my mouth. CJ looks at me like I've totally gone round the bend - and I make a mental note to tell you about it.

fin.

* "That's not a snack, that's an ingredient" © Harsh Betty