It's What's For Dinner!

Why is he such an idiot?  I mean he is a friggin engineer!  AN ENGINEER!  Super smart, and he can’t engineer a dinner?  Every time he makes dinner - and it happens possibly once every 2 months - he can’t seem to do it by himself.  Every. Time.  First, it starts with this great announcement.  “I got dinner, hun!”  Then the banging starts.  The banging of pots, pans and slamming of food onto the counter.  Mind you, he has no idea what food we have or what he is making.  But the noise starts.  Then comes the curses and the proclamations of “Why don’t we have______ ?” (insert any inane ingredient)   and “Where is the ______?”  (insert ANY kitchen object) and comments like “When are you going back to the Giant?”  I refuse to answer .... now.  After almost 12 years of marriage I have figured out that it is easier on all of us if I ignore these questions.  Then he finally figures out what he is cooking and says..... again...... “I am cooking dinner.”  This is where I go upstairs to “go to the bathroom.”  Because I cook every meal, all the time, with one or both kids and a dog up my ass, I don’t feel guilty about this. 

When he has some inkling of what he has to cook, it usually requires the grill.  NO, not a gas grill, he refuses to use a gas grill.  We don’t even own one.  He insists it is because he is a Barbecue purist.  I think that is part of it, but the other part is he is also paranoid and convinced that the gas grill will blow up - one way or another.  

His timing is all wrong.  He starts to actually make dinner at the time we should already be eating dinner.  Most of us who cook dinner on a regular basis, know that no matter if you are doing Rachel Ray’s 15 Minute Meals or if you are making a gourmet meal, you have to budget at LEAST an hour, start to finish.  NO meal takes 15 minutes, unless you are ALONE in a perfectly equipped kitchen, with EVERYTHING clean and ALL ingredients prepped ahead of time.   I wanna see Rach, make a meal with someone throwing a fit about his math homework and another coming out of the bathroom with his ass high in the air, yelling at her to wipe him. Yummo!  But I digress.  Where where we?  Oh yes, The Hub, cooking dinner.  

He starts at 5:30, and since he is going outside, the kids want to help him.  Inevitably, I have to come back downstairs from “going to the bathroom.” This is where The Hub sends First Born in with a request.... “Ma, I need more hamburgers.”  “Mom, where are the buns.”  “Mom, do we have hot dogs?”  Meanwhile, we have no buns, there were only 2 turkey burgers in the freezer and we have 3 hot dogs left, again with no buns.  The requests keep on coming, from tin foil to a spatula to a plate.  The table still has crayons and play-doh on it, intermixed with three days of the Philadelphia Inquirer, that neither of us has had a chance to read.  

Flashback.......... remembering Sunday morning,1999..... 9am.....laying in bed with The Hub before he was The Hub, when he was just Dude......  He gets up, makes me scrapple, eggs, bagels, a pot of coffee......serves me breakfast in bed.... we share the newspaper.....fill our bellies, then fall back to sleep for a little cat nap before getting up.   Ahhh, I miss being wooed.

Ok back to reality, messy kitchen table, not enough food and everyone is hungry and irritated.  The Hub cooks 3 hot dogs 2 burgers and a pan of frozen french fries on the grill.  He walks in the house with the boys.  He puts a cookie sheet with said food on the counter and says.  “OK, dinner is ready. Boys go sit down.  I am going to go cook my hot wings and sausage now.”  Exit The Hub.  

He leaves me with hungry, arguing boys, a cookie sheet of meet and french fries and the table a mess.  This is dinner?  I get heckled when I make a meal that does not include hot rolls along with the meat, starch, and veggies!  I have to explain that the butternut squash, parsley couscous is both a veggie and starch combined, so NO I am not missing a side!   What the fuck!  OK I need to simmer down.  

I make the best of the “meal” for the boys.  I cut the hot dogs up in to little pieces and stuck toothpicks in them.  The boys love poking things with pointy objects.  The burgers were put on english muffins, that I had to thaw in the microwave and toast, since they were in the freezer.  The boys loved the fries.  I added yogurt and an apple and called it a day. 

When the boys are about finished, The Hub comes in with his wings and hot sausage and sits down to eat.  I look at my clan, look at my kitchen with every conceivable pot, pan and utensil sitting out somewhere it does not belong.  Tin foil still out by the grill and I realized that the dog did not eat.  So I get up and feed the dog so she will stop begging at the table.   “Hey Mom, can I have some more milk?” I swear First Born would drink a gallon a day if I let him.  “Hey Mommy, Daddy, First Borny,  Look, look I made a hotdog telescope.”    Little One has 3 toothpicks set up like a tripod with a piece of hot dog on the top. We all giggle with him.  He really cracks us up.  Spurred on by this, he makes mini barbells and other strange, toothpick, hotdog objects.  We are all laughing now at his silliness.  I love this kid.  

Then my stomach grumbles.  ((big sigh)) I did not eat yet and there is nothing left.  MoFo's!!! But Little One has me laughing too hard to be mad.  Smiling I walk over to the microwave and nuke the leftover butternut squash, parsley couscous.  That shit is good! It’s what’s for dinner!