Oreos In The House

How is it that moms everywhere go shopping for school lunch stuffins and stay thin? Why do they all look like Peg Bundy or Elise Keaton? Look at them lanky ladies from Laurelhurst who load up their 3.2 kiddies with all kinds of packaged fabulousness and remain a size 2. I mean, they must keep it around the house, right? Is it under lock and key and their significant others are the keepers of the keys? "Honey, time for lunches..." she yells into his shower in the morning.

Whilst he finishes shaving in the special fog-free mirror he got from the airline catalogue they kept in the first class seat pockets off his last flight to Buenos Aires on business, he replies, "Okee dokey, sweetums! Right after they finish off the Wall Street Morning Report" and turns up the sound on the waterproof, hi-def, flat screen, multi-app, GPS-laden device that shows up with the flick of a finger off the extremely clear mirror. Have you ever noticed these guys never have them little pieces of toilet paper hanging off their faces where they nicked? I have.

He comes out and unlocks the lunch locker (pronouced "Lock Air") they had specially made to match their Peruvian rain forest kitchen cabinet grouping and she loads up them younguns with oreos and cheese food and pb&j and Ruffles and he stands by, making sure she doesn't secret a bag or two off to the side by the juicer or the yogurt maker or the scale she uses to weigh her breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks on. Both satisfied that this is the case and that lunches have been successfully packed, they lock it back up. Maybe together, like two hands on one key. Awwww, isn't that a loving partnership? Okay, a bit much? I'm jealous.

I'm a single mom in the upper-poor income group who works from home. Look out. Here's my Monday: I get up and pack the lunch from the stuff in the cabinet I reserve for lunch fixins, send off my 13-year old to school. I walk to the coffee house with my dog to get my first coffee (a wake-up hangover, er, holdover from New York City living) and walk back home to breakfast, which is a granola bar and a banana, 1/4 of my caloric intake of the day. I write. Then I do my yoga tape with Rodney Yee and "meditate" as best I can. During my meditation, the double stuffed oreos float by several times - ah, not today, little black and white devils! I write some more, then search for jobs. I walk to Greenlake, walk around Greenlake, walk back from Greenlake. Upon entering the house, almost in a trance, I head for the lock-air and I eat four to six double stuffed oreos.

Dammit!! I turned up my ipod shuffle trying to drown out the calling of them, and they still got through!

I look for stuff I don't like when I shop for school lunches so I won't be tempted but there aren't that many things I don't like. I mean, you can only pack her up with lamb and okra and eggplant for so many weeks in a row before the other kids start making fun of her! Who's she going to trade with? Someone from Lebanon?

So I get her what all the other kids are getting and I try as best I can to just stay-the-hell out of it. Not an easy order, since I don't have a loving keyholder in my life without little toilet papers hanging off his nick-free face traveling to South America regularly on business.

Oops. Off subject again.

Today I'm grateful for Rodney Yee's help in stretching me out of it.