Claire Adele is 14, and spends time at home alone. Jack and I will take the Boy to a soccer game, and Claire Adele gets to stay at home, sit on the couch, and read books and check her phone.
I recently discovered a new concerning habit of hers. She is getting into my stash. I can control my consumption, but apparently she can't control hers. I caught her this morning in a conversation.
Me: What happened to all of the chocolate chips?
Claire Adele: There is another unopened bag in the pantry...
Me: And you know there is an unopened bag which means you are tracking the amount of chocolate chips we have in the house.
She didn't argue, which is the opposite of what she usually does, which means she is guilty. She didn't disagree.
I went to the grocery store this morning and complained to the checker that my daughter was eating my chocolate, digging into the pantry and cleaning me out. She polished off half a box of Valentine's Day chocolate (bought the day after at 50% off) and ate a bag of jelly beans. I thought the chocolate would last more than a week, even sharing it with the three other people I live with if we each ate one piece a day. What gives?
"Sugar is favorite drug of teens," he said. I guess I should be happy she is into sugar and chocolate and not other things. Given Washington's recent legalization of marijuana, it is easier for teens to get weed than beer.
This reminded me of a conversation I had earlier in the day. I was walking Fox and ran into a neighbor outside the coffee shop around the corner from my house. This man also has a chihuahua, so we started to talk about how hungry our dogs are all of the time.
"Dogs are motivated by food," he said, "But so are we. People just don't admit it." He told me how his wife is capable of rationing Oreos, but whenever he sees one, he has to eat one.
"They are just too delicious," he said. "I tell her we can't have them in the house or else I'll just eat them. It is not like we live in a place where we are deprived of treats and once a season if we are lucky we get a peanut butter cookie. We live in the city where we can get a treat anytime we'd like," nodding at the coffee shop. He's right. In the meantime, I'll have to keep my chocolate stash low while Clair Adele is in the voracious stage.
Or I'll have to hide it.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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