Breakfast at Dad’s
Stetson’s hands get sticky when he eats pancakes, even when he tries to use the plastic fork, and today he did try.
I can set the table with one hand, but I had to actually set the plate of pancakes back down in the kitchen in order to scrub the ketchup from Thursday evening’s chicken and broccoli dinner because since Thursday evening I haven’t cleaned up. It’s Monday morning, Memorial Day. This is real time newslettering.
So, a quick hard scrub of the table and then a quick set with three mini plastic plates and three sets of knife and fork, one plastic, and the kids are eating. I timed it well; they just finished holiday morning cartoons.
I’ve created a problematic incentive in that when they wake before 7, this time it was 6, I tell them they can watch a movie until it’s time to wake up. Last night they went to bed after protesting for another chapter of the locally written, self published, JOEL SUZUKI AND THE SECRET OF THE SONGSHELL with plans to wake up early and watch HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS part 3, which is HONEY WE SHRUNK OURSELVES (following part 2, HONEY WE BLEW UP THE KID). You can count on Andrew for sub 7 hours of sleep nightly anyway, so I should be glad he slept from 9:30 to 6:01.
Why is my narrative continuing to lurch backward in time? I’m a bit out of sorts today.
What I meant to be saying was I tossed the plastic plates to three equidistant points at the newly wiped table and then spun the plate O pancakes into the center just as the credits rolled and the kids ran over to me hoping to confirm that there was a HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS part 4, which they logically deduced should exist as HONEY WE BLEW UP OURSELVES. I explained that unfortunately there wasn’t, and also, since they would be headed to mom’s at noon today, we didn’t have time for more movies anyway.
Andrew had some negative things to say as he realized for apparently the first time it was a short day with dad. I explained I had to work in the afternoon.
“I wish there wasn’t such thing as having to work! Why does working exist!” Andrew lamented.
“Because,” I said, “if I didn’t work, then we’d be homeless. People have to make money to pay for their house so they aren’t homeless.” This is my basic go to for explaining stuff that Andrew doesn’t like.
“I wish being homeless didn’t exist,” Andrew protested. “Why does homeless even have to be a thing?”
“Well,” i said, “Homeless is the normal thing, where we all end up, unless we do things to prevent it, like building a home.” This is a pretty traditional breakfast conversation at my house. “So you could build a home, but it might not be very good because it would just be sticks and a blanket or something. But if your friend knew how to build a good home, like this one, maybe your friend builds it and then you can pay him for it with money you earn by working. Maybe you can sell hot dogs to earn money to pay him, like I do at 7-11.”
Andrew dropped straight to his core argument at this point. “I wish there wasn’t any rules, and everyone could just do whatever they want. It’s so not fair!”
I suggested he make a comic about this kind of a universe and see what happens. He thought about this and didn’t really like the idea of making a comic. Then I said “I wonder what Stetson would want to do to your legos!”
Andrew said, “but there would be one rule, which is, little kids have to do what big kids say, and can’t touch their legos.”