Bad Mommy, no biscuit!
ARGGHH!
I just helped turn a fantastic morning into a potentially lousy day, by getting into a really fascinating discussion of the Google/China mess with The Boy.
How? Well, we had an animated discussion over breakfast, ran through his Japanese vocab for a retest this afternoon (such a relief when EVERYONE tanks the test and the teacher has to do a repeat!) and he trotted off with Dave who generally drives him to school on Tuesday mornings since he has a standing breakfast meeting near the school.
Twenty minutes later: CUE SCARY MUSIC AND ZOOM IN ON HIS EMPTY BENTO BOX SITTING ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER AMID THE PLANNED LUNCH ITEMS!!!
I know, he's 13 and can make his own lunch, sometimes he does, but I LIKE making him bentos and he likes having them - it's a thing with us. No, it's not all my fault and he damned sure should have noticed that he had no lunch when he loaded up his backpack. Doesn't matter.
As his school is nine miles away on the other side of downtown (about 30 minutes drive) I am not going to take him lunch. Dave made sure he had money but he is a vegetarian foodie who LOATHES the meager veggie options in the school cafeteria. There is a snack bar with fruit smoothies on the menu but it is not open during his lunch period (only for the 8th graders) and he is probably not going to even check out the cafeteria line. I texted him with a "Lunch Impossible" challenge asking him to prove he could assemble a healthy and tasty meal from the side dishes but I know he likely won't even try. He'll have a handful of almonds that were meant for an after-school/pre-test snack and a little water and be done. By the time the test rolls around at 3:45 he'll be hungry and distracted.
His buoyant mood is shot. He's mad at himself and irritated with us for insisting that he add something to the almonds for lunch. Dave said he hit his head on the car trunk getting his sax out and then couldn't get a newspaper out of the machine at school (don't get me started...we take the paper at home and he used to read it at breakfast - now he gets a [free] issue at school everyday and reads during his study hall, yeah he could be doing homework instead but I think he likes the nerd-stigma of being seen reading the paper. sigh) and he dropped his sax case on his toe. It's a comedy of errors all before 8am!
He may still turn the day around, he's generally a lot more resilient than this, but I feel like I had a hand in ruining a perfectly lovely morning. Here's hoping that his morning classes: Shakespearean Theatre, Wind Ensemble, Texas History, and Mass Media Law get him to a better place - lord knows I wish that was MY morning agenda!
I just helped turn a fantastic morning into a potentially lousy day, by getting into a really fascinating discussion of the Google/China mess with The Boy.
How? Well, we had an animated discussion over breakfast, ran through his Japanese vocab for a retest this afternoon (such a relief when EVERYONE tanks the test and the teacher has to do a repeat!) and he trotted off with Dave who generally drives him to school on Tuesday mornings since he has a standing breakfast meeting near the school.
Twenty minutes later: CUE SCARY MUSIC AND ZOOM IN ON HIS EMPTY BENTO BOX SITTING ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER AMID THE PLANNED LUNCH ITEMS!!!
I know, he's 13 and can make his own lunch, sometimes he does, but I LIKE making him bentos and he likes having them - it's a thing with us. No, it's not all my fault and he damned sure should have noticed that he had no lunch when he loaded up his backpack. Doesn't matter.
As his school is nine miles away on the other side of downtown (about 30 minutes drive) I am not going to take him lunch. Dave made sure he had money but he is a vegetarian foodie who LOATHES the meager veggie options in the school cafeteria. There is a snack bar with fruit smoothies on the menu but it is not open during his lunch period (only for the 8th graders) and he is probably not going to even check out the cafeteria line. I texted him with a "Lunch Impossible" challenge asking him to prove he could assemble a healthy and tasty meal from the side dishes but I know he likely won't even try. He'll have a handful of almonds that were meant for an after-school/pre-test snack and a little water and be done. By the time the test rolls around at 3:45 he'll be hungry and distracted.
His buoyant mood is shot. He's mad at himself and irritated with us for insisting that he add something to the almonds for lunch. Dave said he hit his head on the car trunk getting his sax out and then couldn't get a newspaper out of the machine at school (don't get me started...we take the paper at home and he used to read it at breakfast - now he gets a [free] issue at school everyday and reads during his study hall, yeah he could be doing homework instead but I think he likes the nerd-stigma of being seen reading the paper. sigh) and he dropped his sax case on his toe. It's a comedy of errors all before 8am!
He may still turn the day around, he's generally a lot more resilient than this, but I feel like I had a hand in ruining a perfectly lovely morning. Here's hoping that his morning classes: Shakespearean Theatre, Wind Ensemble, Texas History, and Mass Media Law get him to a better place - lord knows I wish that was MY morning agenda!