My kids are almost 14 years apart and personality wise are 180 degrees from each other, where my son aka elder boy has always been a laid back kid even as a toddler, my girl was scrappy and mischievous even in the womb. Seriously, when I would go to my prenatal visits with the midwife, she would position herself in ways where picking up her heartbeat proved difficult and scaring the shit out of us in the process.
That said, as mini-me morphs into being a preschooler and less of a toddler there is one interesting trait she shares with her brother, that is ever so slightly annoying for me but at the same time cute as hell.
She loves to eat at buffets, elder boy at 3 and even now at almost 17 has a fondness for buffets as well. When elder boy was 3, the only buffet near us was Old Country Buffet, taking him there created the same feeling I get whenever I eat at a gourmet restaurant. Seems baby girl fancies the buffets as well, in our little town while we don’t have an Old Country Buffet we do have a Chinese buffet. Now coming from Chicago where we had decent Chinese food, we didn’t have a Chinese buffet; instead you went to the Chinese joints and simply ordered a meal of your choosing.
However since moving out here, I have landed in the land of less than authentic Chinese food, where things like Chicken Fingers are staples on every Chinese menu I have seen in my 6 years out here. So as you can imagine the Chinese Buffet lacks any truly authentic Chinese food, instead you can get Panda Express style fried rice and some roast beef and mashed potatoes all at the same time. I swear kids love this shit, the buffet is the one place that seems to keep both kids happy which is no small feat considering the almost 14 years that separates them and with elder boy 6’2 and growing, well you know it takes a lot to feed this child.
Only problem is I hate buffets, hate them with a passion. For starters, rarely is there anything I want to eat available….how come there are no all natural organic buffets with healthy food? I swear, I would gobble that up with the quickness. Then there is also the pesky issue, that I rarely eat enough at these places to get my money’s worth, seriously one plate of fried greasy goo is more than enough, I really don’t need two or three plates of this shit.
Lastly though there is the fact that while I am not a certified germaphobe, the fact is everyone and is Mama is touching the damn tongs and serving spoons. Problem is, I don’t know where folks hands have been, really….how do I know that man carving the beef to put on his plate didn’t just finishing scratching his hairy nuts or ass before he got to the buffet? I don’t. Nope, every time we go to the buffet, I leave with a queasy stomach but this weekend which was cold and ugly the little one asked to go to the buffet so I said yes…talk about the shit we endure to keep the kids happy.
Anyway just a quick post, life is still crazy though it looks like I may have a reprieve from cooking a whole meal since some friends invited us to dinner and they cook really well, so while I will still roast the organic free range turkey I ordered, I won’t need to prepare a whole feast which has lowered my stress levels greatly.
However work is crazy so I will catch ya’ll when I can, though regular readers know I am an internet junkie and since I finally fixed my laptop, I can now get online a lot easier than when I had to rely on my cranky old backup desktop.
