Cereal Offenses

(pre-script: To get the most out of this post, read it while listening to the song " The Older I Get," by Skillet.click it on on my playlist, then come back and resume reading...I'll wait...) (...still waiting...and please note that for this post, I am waiting on the beach, because it is a happy place for me, and this post requires me to be in my happy place if I am going to be able to write it.)

Y'all, don't even get me started about breakfast cereal.

To my way of thinking, the eating of it was never meant to be a group event. I cannot abide sitting next to a person who is eating cereal. CAN. NOT. ABIDE. There are noises people make while eating cereal, even people who are polite and conscious of the fact that they are eating cereal around other people. And please don't make me LOOK at your cereal while you eat it. And please, please, when you are done with your cereal, do NOT, I repeat do NOT lift the bowl to your lips and drink the leftover milk. (!) CAN you even imagine the nerve!!!! I remember a time when some friends and I were eating breakfast together, and one friend ate a bowl of cereal, then offered the bowl with the leftover milk to another friend so that she could just pour her own cereal in the same bowl, and not have to pour any new milk or use a new bowl. Y'all, I almost threw up. In fact, just thinking about it makes me feel naseated again. I just wish I had never been there to witness that. The next best thing would be to have my memory purged of it forever. I will try to help the process of memory loss along by never speaking of it again. NEVAH!!!

"But Michelle,"

my imaginary reader is asking, "Do you ever feed your own children cereal?"

The answer is that yes, yes I do, in fact, feed my own children breakfast cereal in the morning, gentle reader. But the younger two are the only two who eat their cereal with milk on it; the older two prefer to eat their cereal dry, and drink their milk seperately...which totally works for me, peeps.

Friends, I eat cereal for breakfast, too, but even my own cereal can gross me out sometimes. (I have been known to have to stop eating mid-bowl.) but I do not sit at the table with the children and engage them in lively conversation during the process. I repeat,

I do not join them at the cereal breakfast table.

Instead, I stand above them at the counter, in an "I'm here to get you whatever you need" postition. Let's just call it one of those instances when a mom knows her own limits.*

"but Michelle,"

imaginary reader butts in, "What about the mother of the year award?"

don't worry, dear reader; I didn't apply.

"But Michelle,"

Yes, gentle reader, what is it this time?

"Michelle, you have talked about friends and your children, but you haven't yet shared about your husband."

Oh, alright, ALRIGHT, gentle reader, if that's what you really want to hear about...but I'm warning you up front that this tale will be sometimes ugly, painful, and generally traumatic. Here goes:

Most mornings, Derek does not stop to eat cereal at home before he leaves for work. If he did, I would be sure to give him SPACE in which to complete his cereal eating. I would try to stay down the hall in another room until he was all done, because peeps, it's true confession time, only this time, I'm confessing something about Derek. (I'm warning you, here's where it get's ugly) Derek is among the lift-the-bowl-to-your-lips-and-drink-the-rest-of-the-milk- set. Yes, yes he is. Makes me shudder. Makes me squirm. Makes me make the sour lemon face. (For the record, I do not try to convince him otherwise; I just try to be far, far away if I know he's about to eat a bowl of cereal or two.) This is working for us, generally,

EXCEPT...

(and it's a very large, important EXCEPT,)

...for the night a few weeks ago when Derek wanted to have some cereal after the kids were in bed. I'm all over the late night snack, peeps: I really am. It was just that homeboy chose cereal with milk as his late night snack, and homeboy wanted to sit next to me, where I was blogging, and homeboy brought his cereal right next to me, where I was sitting, yes, let me repeat, he sat next to me, where I was sitting, on my left side, and proceeded to eat his breakfast cereal. And. drink. the. milk.. Even with the cereal box barricade I put up, I was grossed out.

Y'all, I gotta sign off now, before I faint.

-XOXO,

P.S. And don't even get me started about dirty cereal bowls left in the sink with some of the milk and cereal flakes still in them. Y'all, I can't even type that without getting queasy.

*Not that a mom ALWAYS knows her limits, but on this point I have always known.