Back At It

After a summer hiatus, I am revving back into our real lives. For those of you who follow this blog, and by that I mean Mom, thanks for your patience. I love you and will get you a really awesome Christmas present.

Isn’t summer lovely? I did not miss the schedules, the running, the grabbing of almost-nutritious snacks as we rush out the door. And I most certainly did not miss making lunches.

I really do not enjoy making lunches. I feel entirely uncreative by week three. How much can one vary on the turkey sandwich theme? Carrots, hummus if we’re feeling it, chips, fruit, and a cookie if I’ve made them, a few pathetic M & Ms if I have not. Seriously. I’m nearly asleep just thinking about this again.

My daughter will not eat ham, roast beef, or peanut butter and jelly, so that wipes out most of the bagged lunch pyramid. She’s generally an adventurous eater. Her favorite food for years was octopus and I’m not kidding. (Incidentally, it is difficult to find fresh octopus in Iowa, so she’s only had it once. This did not diminish her loyalty.) But octopus eaters tire of sack lunches and so do octopus-eating mothers.

The alternative to sack lunch, as you might recall from yesteryear, is the beloved and questionably edible school lunch. Chicken patty on a bun, anyone? Mystery Mondays? Fishsticks on Friday? I allow for some school lunch here and there. All right, sometimes I beg her to eat it so I don’t have to make one more turkey sandwich. But she is not altogether enthusiastic, and who can blame her? I remember having to read the laminated menu in order to verify what, exactly, was on the lower right square of that tray.

(Um, why is that tray lavender? Adding a little pretty to the miserable? Isn’t that kind of depressing? And what’s with the white glob? Whipped cream? Mashed potatoes? Ice cream? I need the laminated menu to be sure…)

Inspire me, please. What can I include? Please don’t say rice cakes or I will have to cry. Ditto on anything involving carob. Other than those items, what are you people sending to school these days?

Please write soon. School starts this week and I’m all out of octopus.