| Written by Ed Lamaze,
on 07-24-2008
|
Views : 519  |
 Throughout the course of any particular day I am given to ponder. I do it often, sometimes to excess neglecting chores or forgetting to complete simple requested tasks. People might call it daydreaming. Others may call it attention-deficit. Still others might say that I'm manifesting some latent inner turmoil with my inability to accept things as they are, caught between a drive to change the world I see around me and just accepting things as they are . And of course there are those who would just call me lazy. What do I think? Well, I just told you--I ponder. Sometimes things just need to be thunk.
Sunday evening, as I was cleaning up the kitchen after the evening
feast--I pondered. Feast may be an overstatement here. I don't want
anyone to get the wrong idea. It was leftover stir fry from our recent
trip to a Japanese steakhouse. It was the kids' first exposure and they
could not have been more excited. The art of food being prepared in
front of them--with flair--was engrossing. Zia had a few issues with
the fire display but other than that they all seemed to have a blast.
Zoë almost caught the flying egg in her mouth and everyone got a real
kick when the cook at the table next to us bounced a shrimp tail off of
my head. Good times!
So I'm cleaning, sweeping up rice from just about every square inch of
surface space in our kitchen--there was even rice in the living room
and some had made it's way to the basement. It looked like a newly
married couple had paused for their church exiting photo op in our
kitchen an there had been a sale on Mahatma just prior to their
arrival. Seriously, we could have filled a small grain elevator with
the rice I swept up. How in holy hell could these children have
proclaimed themselves full when this much food lay wasted on the floor?
But that's not what I pondered. No, sir. As I swept, I thought. As a
newborn is transitioned from bottle to cereal what are their first
solids? Rice. RICE. That's it. And what do these wide eyed and eager
children do with their first tastes of solids (rice)? Right. They puke
it up all over you and the kitchen floor. And I clean it up.
One of the first do it easy at home--because your kid is completely
over any and every toy you may have purchased--to appease your kid's
extremely short attention span is the noise maker. Rice in a can. And
what happens after two minutes of playing with their newly created
wonderful shaky noise maker? Right. The tape is pulled from can and
rice is scattered all over the kitchen floor. And I clean it up.
I serve rice to my kids often. In casseroles, with gravy, to be used
with vegetable burritos, in jambalaya, in gumbo. The list goes on. And
after every meal, the kids mysteriously proclaim themselves full. I
survey the carnage of a rice strewn kitchen and I clean it up.
We use rice in our food, in our music, in our games, in our artwork. It
was the first food my kids ever ate and at least weekly for the past
seven and one half years rice has been a staple food item on our
grocery list. I've got to ask myself, why? It would seem that an
inordinate amount of my time is devoted not to preparing and consuming
this miraculously fluffy grain, but cleaning it up and throwing it
away. The maddening cycle has got to end.
At least until my little primates learn to use a fork!
Related Articles
|
|
Users' Comments  |
|
Average user rating
 (0 vote)
|
|
|
Quirkee Voices 
