Kindsay loves food. When she wakes in the morning, she goes straight to breakfast. (most of us will hit the bathroom first?) She gets her Pop Tarts, slams herself into the recliner, and devours them. She gulps her milk down so fast you can hear it upstairs. When she finishes with breakfast she secures her lunch for school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she gets dressed for school...hair thrown into a ponytail and clothes placed on her body without thought, such an inconvenience. When she walks through the door at the end of the day she calls me. It doesn't matter that every time she does I ignore it (if I'm close to being home) or answer it and tell her "I don't know," and hang up. I know what she wants. "What is for dinner?" Boy, if I don't have that planned out...you can forget it! I will suffer. And if she finally gives up on me and eats something random, and I actually do cook dinner, I get an earful for not telling her. I say, "I didn't know at the time. I told you to just wait!" But that's not good enough. Why didn't I tell her? Did I know she was going to go eat something else? Why did I let her do that so now she is too full to eat what I've made?
Well, at least someone cares about dinner...my boys eat everything doused in ketchup so they don't care what I cook.
Kindsay finally got some money for her groceries. She always told us that when she got her money for groceries when she turned 18 that she was going to buy her food and we were not going to be allowed to eat it. We would not be able to have any of her food. It would be hers and we would get in huge trouble if we touched it. OK...uh-huh. We know, Kindsay, we won't touch your precious food.
So she gets her money and we go to Target. I get a shopping cart, and she comes up from behind with one of her own. She has some big humongous blingy boots on with her maxi skirt swaying down the aisles like the food is being emptied off the shelves as we speak. She is like a bullet train getting to her next destination. Yikes. I can't even tell people fast enough "excuse us" because she is blowing past them. I stop worrying about other people. If they can't get out of her way on their own, it's their problem.
I tell her, "I have to go grab a few things over there, so I will meet you in the food section. Just for now pick out a couple of things you like." I don't know that she cared if I was still in the store, she was already zoned into the food. I asked Greg to follow her because...well, you never know. Just follow her please.
I get my things and head back to the food section. I can't see her but I can hear her bellowing, "Where's the _____?" "Can I get one of these?" "How many should I take?" It's like she's never eaten before the way she is looking at the food. I follow her voice to find her and Greg in an aisle. I look in her cart. No kidding--five 2-liters of soda, 3 bottles of sparkling cider, 1 box of hot cider packets, 2 bottles of sparkling flavored water, some mini wrapped cheeses, and a couple boxes of Pop Tarts. Wait a minute!--I say. I start putting things back, like 3 of the sodas, 2 bottles of sparkling cider...she starts protesting. I look at Greg, "Really? You couldn't say no to her?" He tells me that what I see in the cart IS a result of him saying no. "You should've seen the cart before I said no!" Well, we need to say it some more because she is not going to drink through her grocery money and she's not eating like royalty out of Target (who eats baby cheeses?) I tell Kindsay, "You have to keep your voice down, I can hear you across the store."
"That's nothing," Greg tells me, "You should've heard her earlier. She was so loud while looking for things, a guy three aisles away hollered that what she was looking for was over by him."
Oh geez. It takes a village, doesn't it!?
I finally get Greg to pull in the reins more, he's shooting down all her requests for this and that gourmet whatever, until she mentions seafood. His eyes lit up and he floated behind her while she headed to the frozen food. They pull out frozen shrimp and Greg loses his judgment completely. I have to monitor both of them at this point. It also didn't help that Kindsay's favorite food is steak..."Where's the steak?" I explain that we can go to the Meat Market for steak, not Target. That satisfies her only if I can give her an actual date that we'll go. Uh, Monday, Monday, okay?...I choose whatever day is enough away that I can get her to forget or at least hush about it for now.
So now we're up to a bag of bagels, flavored cream cheese, flavored oatmeal, frozen shrimp and fish fillets, mini powdered donuts, a few boxes of sugar cereal, some frozen pasta dishes, and mac n cheese. I resign, but, I tell her...This is IT until next month! You get one trip, then you have to eat it slowly or you'll be out of food in a matter of days. I don't know that she is able to register what I say while her eyes are whirling looking at the food in such a new light.
We get home and I assign her a drawer in the pantry and a part of a shelf. She can have those for her food. Oh, thank goodness for sugary, salty, over-processed food--the factories are working overtime now that Kindsay has grocery money! Manufacturers are partying hard--Kellogg's is treating their employees to a cruise...General Mills just wrote bonus checks to their employees, Kraft's processing plant just pushed the conveyer belt speed to "Kindsay's here!" A new chapter in our lives. And this one is going to be long.
