Mailing it in.

I slacked yesterday.

Big Time.

And today I’m paying for it.  I decided that I just didn’t want to do the chores that I should’ve done before I went to bed last night.

I was tired.  All that talk about routines and structure? Yeah. Out the window.  It was back to my “whatever type that isn’t A” personality.  I figured I didn’t need to be on top of it.  That I didn’t need to get to things like dishes, laundry, and cleaning right away.  I mean, what could it hurt to let it slide a little. I deserved a little R&R especially after a full day of work too.  Well, it’s pretty amazing what you can choose to ignore when your feeling lazy.  I awoke this morning and almost called the cops when I walked into the kitchen.  Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration but it looked like someone had broken into the home and pretty much ransacked the kitchen.  Utensils, dirty dishes, pots, pans were all over the place and they all need to be washed. Ugh.  What was I thinking?  Compounding the mess was the fact that for last night’s dinner I had to call in my personal chef, Ettore Boiardi.  Most of you know him as Chef Boyardee.  So not only were there dishes, pots, pans, and other kitchen paraphernalia strewn about the kitchen, it was all coated with the nice red sheen of tomato sauce.  Any parent will tell you that feeding a toddler tomato based products is a sure fire way to make a mess.  It did, however, made me think that my daughter would enjoy finger painting.  Water based of course.

But that brings me to my dilemma.  Not only did I slack-off majorly in terms of cleaning yesterday, I also pretty much mailed it in when it came to preparing my daughter’s dinner last night.  Sure the can says “A Full Serving Vegetables” on it, but come on, that’s like me drinking a V8 and telling my wife that I’d eaten my vegetables today.  I  never convinced her of that and usually got a bop on the head for my efforts, just like in the commercials.

By the way, don’t let that ad fool you.  Ravioli is NEVER as neat and clean as that picture would have you believe.  That kid isn’t about to eat that piece of ravioli.  Oh no. He’s trying to fool everyone into thinking that while calculating the best trajectory to fling that pasta projectile at the camera with maximum splattage. My daughter, on the other hand,  is more of a ravioli ninja (so proud, sniff). I was sure I was watching my daughter the entire time but she somehow still managed to get ravioli under her and smear it all over her butt without my noticing.  She went for maximum smearage instead of splattage.

But I digress.  Back to my conundrum.  Using the Chef is reserved as my last resort.  But here I was, 6 days into my wife’s deployment and having to use my last resort.  I was tapped out. I had run out of ideas on what to feed a 17 month old whose teeth haven’t all come in yet.  What do I cook for her? What is she able to eat? What could I make for myself that she could and would also enjoy? I mean, if I could cook for myself like I normally would she’d be eating steak or some form of red meat ALL THE TIME.  Or BBQ. Or something deep fried.  You get the point.  I’m pretty sure she can’t (and probably shouldn’t) handle that yet or ever (reason #1,923,234 why my wife is awesome, she keeps me from eating myself to death).

She’s got to be tired of steamed broccoli by now.

I know I am. :-/