Lunch time. For the 5 689th time during this lockdown. Homeschooling seems to revolve around food. What is for lunch? What is for dinner? Can I have a snack?
Again and again.
Trying my best to be a good mum and look after my family well I try to make nice lunches. On most days. I've made home made pastries, home made sausage rolls, soups, jacket potatoes, sausage baps, bagels...you name it. Today I wanted to do a plate with carrot and cucumber sticks, hummus, boiled egg, pitta bread, bit of cheese and any other little bits I could find.
When it got near the time of the day when the little darlings start enquiring about lunch I set to work. I was pretty hungry myself to be honest but I was only having a salad (trying to balance out the chocolate I ended up eating last night.. :D). I prepared 4 lovely looking plates of food and was just peeling the remaining eggs (feeling very proud of myself) when my eldest walked in and offered to deliver the lunch to my husband's office (our bedroom where he has been working from since the first lockdown). Helpful child I thought. Yes of course, thank you. I pop the two younger ones' lunches on the table where the girls are waiting and my eldest grabs the plate for hubby and his own one and walks out. I notice he took his plate which was missing an egg (which I am just peeling) and call him back.
The next moment I hear a bump and a crash... My heart drops. I quickly grab the puppy and shut her in her playpen to avoid making the mess worse and creating another accident or a trip to the vet. My heart drops even further when I go to inspect what happened to find both plates smashed on the light coloured hallway carpet. He tripped. Over the small puppy barrier that has been in place for months. That he steps over every time he comes to the kitchen...
Oh well, we get to picking the food up off the floor and wiping the mess. I get the hoover out whilst fighting irrational tears. Accident site hoovered, I continue into the living room as the floor could do with a quick hoover too...
Hoover put away, I find more ingredients in the fridge and make a new lunch for my eldest and my husband. I deliver my husband's lunch myself this time and return to the kitchen to find the two little ones have finished their lunches. Now just to feed the pup. Ah, we are almost out of her food. I prepare her bowl and send my daughter to grab a new pack out of the freezer to defrost for dinner. I am SO hungry by now and want to cry...
Puppy given her lunch I FINALLY sit down to eat mine. I start eating and notice that the puppy hoovered her lunch really fast and is now happily chomping away on something in the middle of her bed in the playpen... I get up to investigate with a sinking feeling. Yep, she pooped ON HER BED and is now devouring her very own desert! I remove her little treat with a poo bag, grab her bed and blanket and stuff them in the washing machine. I go to get the sofa blanket as it could do with a wash too and pop a wash on. Back to lunch. Few more mouthfuls...
Mummy? Calles the littlest from the bathroom. Can you come to wipe my bottom? Yep, of course. I get up again and off to the bathroom I go... Back to lunch. Puppy is whining as she wants to come and play and youngest has come to ask why do Zombies eat brains...
I wash up after lunch, make myself a cup of tea and find puppy chewing out the hallway carpet as she can undoubtedly smell the food that has been dropped on it. I remove puppy, cut off the pulled out stands of carpet, Dettol the hell out of the drop site and find my lukewarm tea. I don't like my tea hot anyway...or eating my lunch in one go... I do however have a feeling that I will be having a salad again tomorrow as I might attack the chocolate and/or gin again tonight if I survive the rest of the day...
Mummy? Can we have a snack? Can you make us a smoothie yet? What is for dinner?
(I have already been asked for ice cream, a snack (TWICE! by two different kids) and if I will make the smoothies I promised to make later whilst typing this out :D)
PASS THE CHOCOLATE!!!