Dinnertime

I realize it's getting to be eating time around 5:00. What to make? What to make? I decide on a reliable Taco Soup. I've got left over Fajita ingredients I can throw in the Vita-Mix 5200. THE blender. The thing channels some ancient astral powers because it could puree my sofa table. It cracks me up that they use guys wearing these headset mikes to do their demos at Costco. I always expect them to rip their shirts off and break out into "Livin' la Vida Loca."

I decide to go a little nuts and add some ground beef I've got frozen in the freezer to the soup (not in the vita-mix). So, I freeze hunks of ground beef in freezer bags but two of them have frozen together so I start banging them on the counter to break them apart. It works, but the baggie breaks and the wad of frozen meat flies out of the baggie and out of sight.

It's while I'm on my hands and knees looking for it that my kids start asking for food. "Mom, can I have a graham cracker?" "Mom, can I have a snack?" "Mom, I'm hungry!" This continues throughout the remainder of meal prep. I finally locate the hunk o' beef in a extraordinarily dirty place. How do you clean dust bunnies off raw meat? A wipie? Those things are all purpose.

I spend the rest of the soup making process tripping over 14 pairs of shoes that Lily has been walking around the kitchen in bringing me sundry cans from pantry. This is how she helps. I have at least one child pulling on me throughout.

Soup finally gets on the table...well counter; we have no table. The kids sit at the counter and eat. Tom just simply does not sit to eat. He prefers to walk around the kitchen holding a plate and fork and it's just pointless for me to try and sit down. I'm not clairvoyant enough to anticipate every item my kids need for their meal. I did not guess, for instance, that Emma needs chopsticks to eat her olives.

Jacob falls out of his chair an average of 2.4 times per meal. This is what happens. Jake is "sitting", the boy does not SIT, he does a kind of modified foxtrot on his butt. So he is bopping around at the counter when he suddenly disappears a la Harry Potter, followed by and clunk and a thud, then, "I'm OK!" He eventually reappears only for a repeat performance 7 minutes later.

The meal goes relatively well with minimal gaseous interruptions. Near the end of the meal Jake proceeds to regale us with stories of all the things he has ever dropped in the toilet and never told us about it.

And this is what Lily looks like if she eats without being wrapped up like a plastic mummy.