cat named pig

You’ll need:

• A bunch of vegetables
• Some tofu and/or meat product
• Enough jasmine rice for twelve people, even though you’re cooking for four
• Most of one day
• Several hundred dollars that you have no other plans for
• Infinite patience

Step 1: Go to Target to procure sugar-snap peas, tofu, and any other ingredients. Since you also need coffee (desperately!), swim diapers, and kids’ toothpaste, you feel smart about going to Target instead of to the grocery store or co-op because you can get everything in one trip. You will also end up buying two identical sets of Tinkerbell mini highlighters as a bribe (yes, one for each kid) and promising to stop at Hot Plate for pancakes on the way home. (This is a promise you are perfectly happy to make and keep, because Hot Plate serves their pancakes with lingonberry butter and that is every bit as awesome as it sounds.)

Step 2: Head toward Hot Plate. Hit gigantic pothole and realize car is making a funny sound and possible smoking. From a stupid pothole on the one road in Minneapolis NOT currently under construction. Mutter several curse words and hope they are not intelligible to the back seat.  

Step 3: Turn corner and park in front of restaurant. Call husband and ask him to call AAA, while simultaneously ordering copious amounts of breakfast foods, diffusing conflict over jelly and creamer packets, and keeping younger child from playing with knife. (This is why you want husband to call Triple A.) Eat copious amounts of breakfast foods while husband arrives to “check out the car” in person before calling AAA.

Step 4: Get ride home from husband, who will return to busted car to wait for tow truck. Unload groceries and diffuse conflict over identical sets of Tinkerbell mini-highlighters. (How can there be conflict if they are identical, you might ask? If you are asking that, you clearly don’t have kids. Please go back to sipping your mai thai and sleeping in late, or whatever it is you do with your luxuriously whining-free days, and don’t worry about why they would fight over something they each have.)

Step 5: Wash hands.

Step 6: Wipe child’s nose. Wash hands.

Step 7: Start chopping veggies. Get interrupted to change diaper. Wash hands twice, just to be on the safe side.

Step 8: Head toward kitchen with intent to continue chopping veggies. Get interrupted by more conflict over toys, and decide it’s naptime. Put younger child down for nap and turn on cartoons for older one. (Because you are not magic. And it’s OK to admit that. Also, you want to chop veggies in peace for five minutes.)

Step 9: Wash hands.

Step 10: Chop veggies. Get interrupted to fetch snacks for child who only recently ate her weight in pancakes and scrambled eggs. Call husband to check on status of car. Diagnosis: costly. Curse out loud and hope loud cartoons drown out sound.

Step 11: Wash hands.

Step 12: Chop yet more veggies, as half of what you’ve chopped so far has gone into the Snack Bowl (almost all the sugar-snap peas and half the red and orange peppers). Offer baby bok choy next time The Snacker returns to ask for more. This is met with disgust, as everyone knows it to be a “weird vegetable.”

Step 13: Drain and press tofu.

Step 14: Take scraps out to compost bin. Do about seven other minor outdoor chores while you’re out there. Come in to sound of frantic voice calling “Mama? MAMA!?!”

Step 15: Explain that you were just out back and let’s not yell during naptime. Make amends with grumpy abandoned child by offering more snacks, but first – you guessed it – wash hands.

Step 16: E-mail omnivore husband to tell him that if he wants meat in stir-fry, he should pick some up on the way home. Wash hands and return to chopping.

Step 17: Realize that you forgot to get coffee (lack of which is probably the reason you hit the stupid pothole – without caffeine, nothing ever goes right). Start to e-mail husband about need for coffee. Get interrupted: naptime is over. Fetch small boy from crib and send him downstairs to watch cartoons with sister. (Because you are still not magic, but you WILL have a healthy, home-cooked meal tonight.) Wash hands.

Step 18: Fix snack for younger child. Explain to older child why it is not actually unfair that he gets a snack, because she has had TWENTY.

Step 19: Fix older child a snack.

Step 20: Fetch milk in sippy cup for younger child.

Step 21: Argue with older child about a) why she can’t have milk in the basement (because it would spill) and b) why she can’t have a sippy cup (because the others are in the dishwasher). 

Step 22: Return to kitchen and contemplate chopped vegetables. Get interrupted by cries of “BUGGY-BUGGY! NOOOO!” and head back downstairs for bug removal.

Step 23: Wash hands.

Step 24 : Decide you’re done for the moment. Put chopped veggies into containers and put in fridge. Sit on kitchen floor with laptop and peruse food blogs for a few minutes. Break into maniacal laughter at recipes for “Quick and Easy Stir-Fries.” BWAAHAHAHAHAHA. HA.

Step 25: Realize that it is almost 3:30. You have literally done nothing today but break your car and attempt to prep some veggies to be stir-fried. Head downstairs to turn off TV and brace for gigantic fight over turning off TV.

Step 26: Gigantic fight finally over. Husband should be home soon. Decide you no longer care about making stir-fry*. Locate takeout menu for Fresh Wok. 

….. 

*It’s not like they would have eaten it anyway. The kids only like plain rice (and plain vegetables) and the husband doesn’t really like tofu. Whatever.