Breakfast of Champions ... If We're Talking About Junk Food Champions

I'm at the grocery store thinking maybe I should get some healthier snacks for the boys' lunches and whatnot. So I pick these up off the shelf: $2.99 on special this week,  2/$5. And I have a 50¢ coupon. Doubled. So I pick up two. I woke up a bit peckish this morning, and was inspired to have a healthy-ish breakfast. After all, it says right on the label:

• All Natural
• No Trans Fats
• Baked
• Pita Chips

I figure, good breakfast = good day. I even had orange juice instead of my usual beverage-not-to-be-named. Then I look at the nutrition facts panel on the back. Why, oh, why, do I do this to myself?


Are you kidding me? Eight, as in onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight servings per container?

Seven chips per serving? Oh, I'm sorry, it says "about 7 chips". Still, you're kidding me, right? Nobody counts their chips unless they're playing poker.









This ...







... is a recommended single serving.

By way of comparison, this ...

... was my breakfast.

And no, I don't normally eat junk food breakfast off of Aunt Lee's formal china. But I needed a good shot so I thought I'd brag on my china a bit. I love this pattern, and use the dishes far, far too infrequently. They were a wedding gift to Tom's Great-Aunt Lee  from her mother, and I was honored that she gave them to me when we came back from Kwajalein. She was married for 72 years when Uncle Johnny died in 1998. She was the youngest of her siblings: all 23 of them.

Feline Burglar Alarm (Patent Pending)

I'm cool with being old enough to be my sons’ grandmother, but not so much with being old enough for my friends’ babies to be having babies. Talking about baby showers got me remembering mine.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life.

On a Saturday morning that September I was pregnant with Agent 96, we had planned a morning of apple picking with some friends. Neatnik Tom was more annoying than usual, making sure the house was picked up, the dishes done, and the rugs vacuumed All before 9am. Like I'm supposed to know all our knickknacks had to face forward before we leave to pick apples. I had one particular towel that I used in the downstairs bathroom (aka the downstairs bathroom towel, sheesh) and I was peeved that, with that towel in the laundry he made me, made me, put a random towel in the bathroom.

“The yellow towel? Are you effing kidding me? No, I don’t need to put the yellow towel in the bathroom. I’ll put the right one back when the laundry’s done. Jerkwad.” Forgive me. I had hormones. And a big honking watermelon pressing on my bladder.

“Humor me, Linda. I just want a towel in the bathroom, okay?”  Harumphing loudly enough that I was sure he'd know I was the better person, I hung up the towel, and we headed for the door. Leaving the house, I gathered up C and tossed him inside then closed the door behind me, checking, as always, that it had latched.

I’m sure I bellyached during the drive to the orchard about the foolishness of putting the yellow towel in the downstairs bathroom. I’m quite sure I complained to our apple picking companions, Eric and Barbara, about how unreasonable Tom had been over the great towel debacle. But I enjoyed the apple picking, and the fresh air, and the company of our friends. I can only assume they did not equally enjoy the company of my insufferable self.

I knew something was wrong when we returned and I saw C in the front yard waiting for us.

“What’s C doing out, Tom? I’m sure I left him inside.”

“I must have gone back in for something and let him out by mistake”, was Tom’s explanation.

Confused, I knew that Tom had been waiting for me in the car. That was the usual scenario; I invariably forget something, and never make it out the door on the first attempt. The only reasonable explanation for C's presence in the front yard was that the house had been broken into, and the burglars were unaware C had escaped. Was he trying to tell us something? (Like, “There’s a burglar in our house. Maybe two. Meow. And is there any food out here?”)

“No, Tom, really; C shouldn’t be outside. Something’s wrong.” 

Adding to my overall pissedness at Tom was that he was making me, his beloved and by now seventy-three-weeks-pregnant wife, go in first. I touched the doorlatch. My heart stopped,  my fears of an intruder confirmed. We have one of those old-style front doors with the button on the edge that locks and unlocks the mechanism, and we always have the button set so that the door won’t unlatch from the outside. You have to use the key to open it, and the door locks automatically when you close it. The door was unlatched. Clearly someone unfamiliar with our doorlatch protocols had been messing with the door. All signs pointed to a burglar. 

Holy hot cross buns. There’s a band of armed robbers in my house, and you’re making me walk in first? Who are you? And what have you done with Tom? Was what I was thinking. 

What I said was, “You want me to open the g-d front door? Okay, then, I’ll open the g-d front door and then I’ll say I effing told you so.” Or words to that effect.

So I open the door, take a step inside, and …

I just realized I still wear this t-shirt

Tom and Agent 96, Fall 1997

By the following year I had recovered from the trauma, and we went apple picking again. I was pregnant. Again. But the day didn't involve a single curse word.

Siblings ...

For every "Hey, cut it out, doofus" I have at least one "Woof, get away from my food dish" or "Hiss, get off my couch".

Now, onto dessert

Feeding time at the zoo is, well, a zoo. Approach Zoetje's food dish at your own risk. I have tried a variety of locations for the cat's dish that will be inaccessible to the dog  but easily accessible to Ada --  poor, sweet 18-year-old Ada, who doesn't jump quite like she used to. After a couple of days cats on the  -- eww --  kitchen table,  I found a shelf by the cellar stairs that has worked okay so far. (Alas, Scruffy still sits on the table, waiting for food. All those years I've spent training cats not to go on tables and counters?  Back to the drawing board.)  I open all the cans at the same time and plate the contents simultaneously while Zoetje, with her low growl,  stands guard to keep the cats from getting too close. First, I give Zoetje her food, but I make sure the cats see theirs, too. Then, during that 3.5 second window when Z's face is in her food, I quick-as-a-bunny bring the cats' food to a shelf in the cellar next to the stairs. I count on out-of-sight-out-of-mind, because there's simply no place in our house that works to keep Z away from the food. She usually heads straight for the cellar stairs when she'd done with her meal. Agent 96 has been known to feed the cats in complete silence before Z wakes up. Those are the only days the cats get all the cat food.

Dogs are like teenage boys in the housekeeping department, too, and the house looks more like a frat house than a private home. 96 walks in from school, and within a minute, his jacket is shrugged off his shoulders and the phone's tossed onto a chair. I spy Agent 98's bowling ball in the middle of the living room floor, and ask him, the only bowler in the family, to put it away. "I don't know how it got there, Mom. It was there when I got home from school". It wasn't me: I know for a fact that I don't allow bowling in the house. Breathe, Linda. Just walk away.

So I pop into the kitchen, and there's Zoetje, eating a stick of butter. A wrapped stick of butter. And of course she just left some uneaten wrapper bits there on the floor next to the paper towels she's snatched from the rubbish barrel. The rest -- well I guess I'll clean them up the next time we go for our walk.

Wait. Did I just say dog ate a quarter of a pound of butter? Maybe this time the boys take her for her walk.

Next Time You'll Have to Check the Fine Print

Sure, it's in my contract that I have to bark and growl and whatnot, but show me where it says I have to get off the bed to be a guard dog ...

... And you can complain all you like, but that contract doesn't actually specify how many times a day I'm allowed to poop.