This Is Going To Hurt Me More Than It Hurts You: and it did
Alexander is an only child this week. Jane has gone to camp, so it’s just the three of us. To be perfectly frank, we are not quite a family this week. We are a couple with a kid.
Yesterday I asked Alexander if he’d like sausage, broccoli and rice for dinner. He was very enthusiastic, so I made the dinner. I did use a beef sausage instead of the Italian pork that he typically likes, but I did so knowing that there were breakfast steaks in the refrigerator, and I had an alternate meal in the event that he didn’t like the new food.
He didn’t like the new food.
I offered him the breakfast steaks and he said, “I’m not in the mood for this.”
At this point we require some back story. I cook dinner every night of the week. At noon each day I prep my lunch and our dinner. Every dinner has two greens, a starch and a protein. Every dinner has at least two things on the plate that every member of our family enjoys. If you do not the dinners I prepare, it is absolutely your problem.
When Alexander told us that he didn’t like the sausage and that he wasn’t in the mood for breakfast steak we asked him to eat his rice and broccoli. He said he wanted to, “look in the kitchen for something else.”
The answer was no. The process was long, but Alexander ultimately decided he wasn’t in the mood for broccoli, steak or rice and that he didn’t like sausage.
He went to bed hungry and crying.
Mr. G. and I shook, and fought back tears of our own. We did it for his own good. Family dinners were devolving, and Alexander was manipulating his way into the pantry, eating cereal and fruit. Further, we would eat our dinner while Alexander moaned about the food I’d made, and then when we were done, he would be starting his alternate meal.
It was very unpleasant.
Last night, while shaking and trying to not cry, I put rice down the kitchen sink. I wasn’t thinking straight, and if you don’t cook you might not know that rice absorbs water and expands. Like a sponge.
So I made a little video about how to unclog your kitchen sink… you know… in the unlikely event that you ever put rice down the drain.
Sorry for the mediocre video quality. It’s been that kind of day.