If you give a mom a coffee

August 21, 2012 By

If you give a mom a coffee, she’ll want a donut to go with it.

So she’ll stop by this great bakery on the way to the kid’s school drop off, get the éclair instead, and eat it in four bites.  Stuffing her face with saturated fat and sugar will remind her that she’s fifteen pounds overweight. So she heads to the gym.

At the gym, she starts to run on the treadmill.  Running on the treadmill and staring at a wall covered in closed-captioned televisions annoys the fire out of her because she can’t hear a dang thing and has to keep up with all those words popping up after someone talks.  It’s distracting.

All that useless television that no one watches because people’s heads are buried in their iphones makes her think that her mind is just a collection of closed caption nonsense with words popping up after the thoughts have passed.  And when a mom starts to focus on distracting energy, she obviously thinks of her two-year-old son, who loves animals and trains and has an odd way of making her sit in a chair holding him for a solid hour just to hear him breathe and inhale the loveliness of his messy, sweaty toddler hair.

Sweat reminds her of the gym, where she is currently still residing, and she glances down and sees that she’s burned off only 92 calories.  Close enough.  She gets into her car that smells slightly of either vinegar or rotten milk and notices her kid’s spare clothes sitting on the front seat that were supposed to be sent to school for water day.  It’s a little red shirt from the Austin Zoo.  Which reminds her of the Austin Zoo.   It’s plainly written on the shirt, for heaven’s sake.  That’s just called reading.  But she’s famished and dehydrated and exhausted from trying to read all that closed captioning.  Cut her some slack.

So the next day mom hauls everyone to the small rescue zoo to see the prairie dogs and peacocks and ride the train.  As she’s passing by the grey wolves she thinks what a really strange zoo that has a hundred goats and a large potbelly pig with not one single zebra.  Of course zebras remind her of nothing, so she stares down at her bulging waistline and pats her children on the head.  She thinks she might hit the gym, but her son needs a nap so off they go for lunch and a big pile of laundry and she’s consumed with guilt over the fact that she paid a hundred bucks to the YMCA this month for a stupid 92 calories.

When she gets home, she notices that her husband hasn’t unloaded the dishwasher as promised.  She’s faced with a pile of dog vomit and her son has decided he’s rather not sleep but instead run around in concentric circles around the rug declaring to all who will listen that he’s batman.  She scratches her head at why all the magazines are not in their proper place but then realizes that the magazine rack has been converted to a trailer to be drug behind the rocking horse by one of her best winter scarves.  Her daughter is whining that she only likes mac-and-cheese and that she doesn’t like peanut butter and I could have sworn I told you that already, but the mom magically can’t hear any noise coming out of her daughter’s mouth and suddenly remembers there are dark chocolate oatmeal cookies in the pantry.  So she decides to let the house run amuck while she sits in the corner reading about Frank McCourt’s rotten life in Ireland.  And you know what happens when a momma starts eating cookies and reading a book.

She’ll most likely want a cup of coffee, a handful of Advil, and a babysitter to go along with it.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

pork chops for breakfast

March 26, 2012 By

While the rest of the Western world is baking muffins, chomping on triskets, and sucking on popsicles, I’m at home gnawing on a boiled egg.  It’s not because I particularly love eggs.  It’s just that I’m on a low-carb diet, which is the one thing I know works.  I have to start running to hasten the effects of weight loss because I can’t stand eating tortillas that taste like cardboard.

All our kids eat is carbohydrates, wrapped in bar form, or rolled into the size of a cereal pellet, or hardened into the shape of pasta.  I bake it and toast it and wallow in it, and yet I can’t eat a bite.  Our pantry really is a diabetic nightmare.  Oatmeal.  Buttery crackers.  Muffin Mix.  Cookies.  Oh, the cookies.  Sometimes I peek around the onion soup mix to see if the chocolate chips are still there, waiting for me to come to my senses. They are sitting there on the top shelf like a stoic friend, patient and still.

The worst is breakfast.  After a week of eating scrambled eggs, or peanut butter on a flatbread, or a processed low-carb bar, you’re a little tapped out.  I went online to try and find low-carb breakfast ideas.  It was packed with helpful information, like “why do you have to eat sweets for breakfast?  Try tuna!” and the always helpful “if you get sick of eggs, just add extra cheese.”  There were fifteen recipes for frittatas and a mock pancake recipe made from cottage cheese.  One recommended left over pork chops.

I don’t know about you, but when I get out of bed in the morning, after scrubbing away stale breath and sipping on hot coffee, all I can think of is tuna.  And pork chops.  And cottage cheese pancakes with no syrup.  Stop it.  My mouth is watering.

This is why no one can stay on a low-carb diet forever.  There has to be some wiggle room.  I punched down the bread dough I was making this afternoon (now that I quit my job I declared Monday “Bake Day.”  I’ve also declared Wednesday Spa Day and Friday Drinking-and-Gambling Day, so it all evens out), and realized I’d never eat a bite.  Who bakes bread and then fails to eat one single bite?

People who need to lose ten pounds.  That’s who.  They are over in the corner with a bad attitude eating a handful of almonds and a cheese stick.  Don’t go near those people.  They are bound to crack. Or pass out.  Or start stuffing tortilla chips down their pie hole whilst laughing eerily.

Soon, I’ll ease those lovely carbs back into my life.  Until then, I’ll just be here.  Quietly eating pork chops for breakfast but dreaming of thick, sweet oatmeal.

Filed Under: Health, Humor Tagged With: , ,