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Friday, May 2, 2014

Food on the fly..or is it flies on the food?

     The Boy got a multi-purpose tool. This is essentially a pocketknife with a flashlight and a corkscrew. It was some mail-order  subscription dingledadder that is supposed to be a keychain so it didn't seem too dangerous. It was supposed to go in my purse so what could be bad about letting him play with it? Well, let me tell you...

     First,  there is a Code of Behavior With Knives  that boys just pick up from the air like a radio frequency ( " tune in to KMAN for the sounds only guys can hear" ).  This starts with incessant sharpening of the knife.  Follows with boy showing off the sharpness of his knife to anyone who can shift eyes into the rough area of the knife. Next comes the first finger cut with the knife but this is tricky to discern. It sometimes comes with a muffled "OWCH DANG IT" and furtive sounds of a knife being hidden. Count ten then wait for boy to nonchalantly ask for a Band-Aid.  Ask boy if he has been playing with his knife and he will likely look indignant that a mother would imply such a childish thing. Knives are for real, manly work he may rebuff. This is how you know the Code is on.

     Second, odd toothpicks may start appearing in inappropriate places. Perhaps a straggly 4" L-shaped pick dangling from a baby sister's mouth. A sandwich held together with a bit of whittled hydrangea twig. Colored pencils reduced to lovely sawdust. Like we incinerated a peacock on the dining table. A wooden haircomb tine wasting away to a third the size of it's mates. Not whittled away. That would be wrong. But tested out, sort of.  Boy may become radically interested in oral hygiene and need to carve out something to remove a bit of chocolate milk from between his teeth. Hide your chopsticks. 

But this is all just practice. Knives are for real, manly work, you know.  The Boy sought long and hard for real work. He pried some bottles open. He cut open a really difficult bag of Frootie Tooties to save his sisters from starvation. I'm pretty sure that in his mind he was one of the Donner Party and that 75F degree weather was a deadly blizzard. He was stalking grizzlies. He was fending off Confederates. He was getting darned annoying. So I latched the screen door and told them to play outside unless someone was bleeding. And guess how long that took?

Roughly ten minutes later three children galloped up the porch steps. They banged flat into the locked door.  A girl had an injury. Fell down and got amnesia she claimed. They needed in stat! So Boy kicked into superhero mode...that hero must be The Tick or some other intellectually challenged character... yells " I'll save your happy behinds"...and he flicked out the tiny little blade on his knife...seriously, I have nail files that are longer and sharper...and he cut the screen to let them in. For amnesia.

So since I will be squishing the new screens back in with a cuticle pusher and an old butter knife there is no time to actually feed them. And since we are in the South there are already houseflies in the screenless kitchen that are big enough to carry off the Small Girl.   G*d bless Amy from FoodDoodles. She is the reason my children are alive today.

http://fooddoodles.com/2011/03/08/chocolate-fig-truffles


Plus, who can resist anything that is health-ish and looks like a truffle??  Seriously better than calling my therapist.