Waste in the Lake

A benefit to weighing more is that on the see-saw I can make someone scared. Ok, so I weigh more than my Oldest child. Big deal. I felt on top of the world though. I took the crazies to the park and my Oldest wanted someone comparable to his weight and here I go on this crazy see-saw. I had a continual smile on my face and a giggle about to burst every moment. My Oldest kept saying, "Hey!" as I would abruptly stop the thing and make his rear end bounce clear up in the air and scare the crud out of him. Power. The thrills of power. He would half laugh and half scream but I could tell he thought it was fun. At one point I put all my weight down on my seat and had him as high as he could go, saying, "Now I have you exactly where I want you." He struggled like a Jedi in Darth Vader's death grip. It was too fun.

We went to our lake and the kids looked for stones to collect and I walked around and enjoyed the scenery. Suddenly the kids were throwing the stones in the lake and noticed something. I looked out and it appeared to be a dead duck. A literal dead duck, just floating there all bloated and weird looking. The kids tried to pelt it with the stones but they were too far away to reach. My Oldest had his feet in the water a little and I imagined how rank and full of bacteria his shoes must be. Just vile.

Instead, we admired the stones they collected. My daughter named hers ridiculous names. "This one is called 'medicine dropper' because it looks like a pill." And it did look like a pill. Instead of the blue pill or the red pill, it looked like the white pill. I thought how horrid it would be to swallow that thing by accident.

"This, I will call Wedding Dress..." A beautiful white rock is what she showed me. Eraser Eater cried because he said that he is the one that came up with that name and she stole it. After, my daughter kept saying, "My precious rock! They stole it from us!"

They kept going on and on like this and finally I had had enough, took them to the park, and went home to make dinner.

What did we have? French fries, charred chicken wings, and broccoli. I am not much of a cook lately, although in my glory days I once was a good one. You give up when your husband wants to eat fried chicken, pizza and fried chicken all the time.

My neighbor approached me one time while I was grilling and said, "You make a lot of chicken don't you?" ---As she looks down on my chicken.

"Yes, I do." I said, smiling. Of course I do. We LIVE on chicken over here. And I can't even make it a myriad of ways. I make it grilled, baked (in the plainest fashion) or fried. Yep, that is all my choices, dear reader.

Just make whatever I want, you say? Oh, I do sometimes...and what happens is that no one eats it (except me and the kids---and sometimes that is a struggle) and half a pot roast literally goes to waste. HALF A POT ROAST. WASTE. It is not easy being economical and pleasing everyone. It is just not possible. I have done this now for almost nine years and I have finally decided that cooking is nice in itself but not really required where I live.

My friend says that in her house it is the same way. She LIVES on beef at her house and she is sick and tired of beef. She would love to serve chicken fried, baked (in the plainest fashion) and grilled. She doesn't even ASK anymore what her husband wants. The answer: beef. You know if she does not do it that half of her dinner that night is going down the garbage disposal. I feel the pain. This must be the thing about having too much in America. We can choose what we want and then throw away what we don't want! Lovely.

So I saw a dead duck in the lake. I thought about someone killing it or how it got killed. It's bad meat now. Wasted meat. Ok, I am going too far. I am not getting so "Great Depression" on you that I would make cicada tacos. I am not that bad. I just hate waste. It sears me. I would never eat a bug anyway. A big one at that. Yuck. I have eaten plenty on my runs outside---a little gnat fare will do you well and put some protein in your body. You can't help it; sometimes they just fly right up your nose.

I had weevil soup once, but I will post on that another day.