I'm feeling out an interesting little perspective essay on responsibility. It's still bouncing around in my brain but I'll probably write something in the next few days.

Had a very pleasant evening with Alex. The fog this evening had I-695 locked solid from I-83 out as far as I could see, so I took my little detour through Charles Street and managed to catch all but the light on Towsontown Boulevard right as they turned red in front of me. I wound up being one of the last people at the after-school care and about 5 minutes before the 18:00 closing time.

As soon as we got home we checked her homework and she bolted out the door into the pouring rain right on schedule to go play with her friends as usual. She came back for dinner and all I had without going out shopping was a Healthy Choice meal of chicken, corn and macaroni noodles. These three items literally rank in the top five of her favorite foods, but tonight she singled out the 3 brocolli stems and 4 red pepper chunks the size of my pinky toenail on the front packaging among everything else and decided that she didn't like it.

I sighed and tossed it back into the freezer and was thinking of what else she would possibly eat in the house that I had time to prepare when it occured to me that it didn't really matter if it wasn't exactly what she felt like eating. Into the microwave it went.

I started picking up and sweeping the teeming crap-pile that was my living room, and in a stroke of genius asked Alex to start cleaning her room while the meal cooked. The meal came out of the microwave and the negotiation began. Several volleys later and a quick discussion of the nutritional value of various foods:

"Chicken has protein and that's the most important thing, so I'm just going to eat the chicken." (This is her grandmother's line: carne super omnia, I think.)

"Noodles have carbohydrates and vegetables have vitamins so you have to eat all those too or else your body won't get everything it needs."

"Oh." (This means the extent of her useful nutition knowledge has been reached and my extra 16 years of life have won this particular discussion. But the carb thing will come back to haunt me next week, I'll bet good money.)

This followed by a short discussion on how finishing the food tray would make for a pleasant bedtime (not finishing would make for a rather early one) and the evening came to a rather pleasant conclusion.

By the end of the evening, most of the junk on her floor was put away (to where I don't dare ask) and everything from the living room was thrown out, swept away or stacked somewhere in the basement rec room to rot in peace.

My lawn is short with nice tidy edges (thanks to my new weed-eater), and my living room and dining room are clean. Now all I have to do is do the dishes, finish the laundry, file some paperwork, pile the crap in the rec room into neater piles, get a hair cut and a car wash and pretty much everything will be back in order. Woo hoo!

Currently listening to: Smile - Dancing All Alone

June 2, 2003 - June 4, 2003

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