Sometimes You Just Got to Say....

This is the last week of school for Big Kid and I, and thankfully, my term paper is FINALLY DONE!! Big Kid has some things to wrap up, but he is on his own for that one. I'm done! Yippee!

And man, am I ready for a vacation.

From Doods. My Doods. I want to find some girls and go on a Dood-free weekend road trip full of drinking and debauchery and laughter.

But there's still too much to do. Maybe next month.

::sigh::

So I'll just pretend all my girlfriends are here and we're dishing (sorry guys).

Why can't I have one freaking thing to myself? One thing, I mean just one---that at no point has had somebody else's grubby fingers all over it? Other than tampons, I mean.

Let's talk about food, for instance.

Now mind you, I am not forcing anyone to diet, I'm not starving anyone, and we have a mighty full larder. I provide 3 squares and ample snacks. And I'm not talking about Little Guy, because amazingly enough, the kid asks first before he even pours himself a glass of milk. Then he offers to pour one for everybody else.

It's the other two galoots I'm bitching about.

For Christmas, a friend sent me a boxed set of specialty cocoas in tins. There were three 20 oz tins. I stored them on the coffee shelf in the pantry, and specifically told everyone "hands off".

A couple months later, we ran out of regular cocoa, and it was a snowy day. The guys were begging for a hot cuppa, so I broke open the boxed set and one of the tins and made them each a cup of cocoa. Then I put it all back in the box and replaced it on the shelf.

Not TWO WEEKS later, I was rearranging some things and moved the box. It felt awfully light.

All three of the tins were empty. And replaced back in the box so it wouldn't be noticed right away.

After a survey of the family counting the number of people who enjoyed MY gift of cocoa in the previous 2 weeks?

Little Guy: 1 cup
Me: None
Hubby: None
Big Kid: Why's everybody looking at me? The dogs know how to heat water in the microwave too, you know!

There were two days of ass-kicking going on in the Attila house.

You would think after the raisin incident (where Big Kid consumed 2 pounds of raisins meant for holiday baking in one night and thought aliens were laying eggs in his digestive tract when he crapped out a bunch of undigested gray rehydrated butt chunks the next morning) he would have learned his lesson.

Not MY boy! Hmph.

My hubby is almost as bad. His excuse? "I had a golfball lodged in my throat/anal fissures/toe fungus/pick your ailment, and the ONLY thing that would make me feel better was that special thing that you had hidden for yourself under the 12 pounds of cast iron and copper pots in that far cabinet where you store the pans you only use once every two years."

Ok, that's sort of an exaggeration. But seriously, the real story is just as heinous.

For example: When I make up a grocery list, I look at the sales and ask the guys what kind of cookies/ice cream/pudding/whatever dessert they want. They let me know what they want and it always involves chocolate.

Not too long ago, Snack-Pack pudding was on sale, and I had a ton of coupons. So I picked up about a dozen packages of what they unanimously asked for. Milk chocolate pudding. Dark chocolate pudding. Chocolate and caramel pudding. Mississippi Mud Pie pudding. Something for all of them. I also got ONE Snack-Pack (4 cups to a package) of tapioca pudding for myself.

Hey, it's my kind of comfort food. I'm not going to apologize. I totally pass over any chocolate dessert for a piece of fruit, but once in awhile a little tapioca goes a long way. I hid it on the second shelf on the right side of the fridge, and buried it under the dregs of a bag of wilted pre-packaged salad, a half-filled bag of baby carrots (which everybody but me hates), and put a jar of dill relish and like 6 packages of chocolate snack packs in front of it.

The very next morning (usually I get up at around 5am) I opened the fridge to get coffee creamer and noticed that everything had been messed around with on that particular shelf. I moved the chocolate snack packs, and the relish, and the wilted salad, and the half bag of baby carrots.

Underneath there was one little tapioca container left, lonely and bereft amongst all the packaging.

When Hubby got up, I confronted him. "Did you eat my tapioca pudding in the middle of the night?"

He was indignant. I had an upset stomach so I ate "some" to settle it!

Some? 3 out of 4 pudding cups is "some"? When does it become "most"? After they're ALL gone?

And um yeah. Everybody and their mother knows that sugar, fat and lactose is the BEST way to settle an upset stomach. Silly me. The Pepto is front and center on the medicine shelf, next to the Tums. You really had to dig for this particular remedy, though, didn't you?

Both guys wait until I'm asleep to go rooting around in the cupboards in the middle of the night. It doesn't matter what is just sitting there in front of their faces. Like cookies, pudding, chips, or ice cream (in the freezer). If it's something that takes an effort to find, or an ingredient I bought for something I have to make the next day for a meeting, a conference, a school party...well then it's a prize!

Is it some kind of leftover caveman instinct where they have to hunt to get it? Is snitching a mini-bag of slivered macadamia nuts now the equivalent of bagging a mastadon for the family table?

I'm simply amazed...really AMAZED that the two of these Doods haven't yet bumped into each other in the dark---one scarfing down Betty Crocker frosting with his fingers and the other stuffing his face out of a container of Philly Cheese pre-made Cheesecake filling. Seriously---it's like they take shifts!

And it gets gross.

When I make a dinner that has nuggety stuff (chicken nuggets, jalapeno nuggets, cheese sticks, etc,) I have to make sure that everything is perfectly proportioned and if someone isn't there to eat their share at that exact moment, it gets wrapped up. Otherwise, there are a couple of guys who meander through the kitchen ostensibly to "put their glass in the dishwasher--ha", or "throw away their napkin---ha" who think that whoever didn't get their meal at that exact moment won't notice that their original equally proportioned six chicken fingers have been reduced to two.

On that thought, last month, I had just warmed up a small plate of BBQ pork that I hadn't finished from my dinner from the night before. I backed up, almost stepped on the little dog, and spilled about 80% of it on the floor. Scooped the pork up and put it back on the plate. It was coated with grody kitchen floor detritus and dog hair. I stuck the plate on the counter, was wiping the floor (nothing like getting sauce tracked through the house), and somebody knocked at the door.

UPS guy. I signed for the package, opened it, dealt with it, and ended up grabbing an orange before running downstairs to my office to take care of a couple of things. Totally forgot about the plate with the dirty pork.

Came upstairs and saw the plate sitting there, but it was empty. WTF? Called Big Kid, and demanded to know where it had gone. Since there was only the two of us in the house.

Did you eat my lunch? (not like I was actually going to eat it myself---with all the hair and crap stuck to it I was going to toss it, but I was baffled and pissed off by the audacity).

He pretended to be shamefaced. "It looked so good I couldn't help myself". Uh huh.

Did you even look at it before you ate it? No he hadn't. All he saw was something he wanted and inhaled it. As if it had been prepared especially for him. Didn't even notice that it had a fur and oatmeal crumb coating.

blech.

A few weeks ago, I had coupons for Tyson's ready made strips that you can find in the lunch meat aisle. The store had a 50% sale on Tyson stuff, so I got a bunch of bags of pre-cooked and seasoned chicken and steak for about a dollar a holler.

I showed them to all of the guys specifically and said---"I've got meal plans for these. They are NOT FOR SNACKING!"

The next night, I was making the fixings for steak fajitas and opened one of the packages of steak strips. It had a bad, sort of fruity, and fermented smell---kind of what I'd imagine a corpse that had been in the water for a week would smell like. The expiration date was two months ahead, so I figured I'd take it back to the store for a replacement. Sealed it back up, stuck the bag in the back of the fridge, and used the rest, which was fine.

I was going to the store a couple of days later, and dug the bag out. It was almost empty. eek! I confronted Big Kid and he swore he hadn't touched it.

I called Hubby at the office.

"Did you eat the steak strips from that bag in the back of the fridge?"

Busted! Again, he was defensive. I had an uncontrollable tickle in the back of my throat and I needed to eat a couple of pieces of steak to take care of it!

A couple of pieces? The bag was practically empty.

"Did you SMELL it before you ate it??? What in the hell is WRONG with you?"

It smelled kind of funny, but I thought it was the special seasoning!

Oy.

I swear, I could take a half a cup of moist dog food, hock a loogie on it, cover it with chocolate sprinkles, wrap it up and hide in the back of the fridge, and it would be gone by morning.

Just because it is something they have to hunt for.

WTF is wrong with Doods?