Adapting to hostile environments

I realized yesterday that I do certain things to avoid my children and to avoid having to share My Special things with them.  Take candy for instance.  If I quietly walked into a room with a bag of M&M’s (an old favourite of mine) they’d be on me like a school of piranhas (I actually googled what you call a group of piranhas – I thought because of their ferociousness that they would have a kick-ass name, like a ratchet of fish,  or dentition of fish, or even a gnash of fish, but nope, they are just called a school like any other ho-hum fish – kind of knocks the wind out of their sails, amiright?)  And if I ever ordered french fries I would be lucky to get one in my craw before they jammed their grubby little hands into my carton and ate every last one, even the ones with the green hue on them, leaving me nothing, not even an apology for their lack of self control.  And If I ever thought to sit down for a quiet moment to read, you just know a fight would break out/milk would spill/ a mosquito would make its way into our house in January/the PVR would accidentally have erased all of the iCarly’s or some other crisis on the level of the Cuban Missile Crisis would erupt in our little home, thus rendering mommy’s quiet reading time null and void.

So, l have adapted.  Instead of M&M’s, I buy Goodies and licorice Allsorts.  They can’t  STAND the flavour of black licorice. It’s particularly amusing to watch them be attracted to the yummy icing bits on the Allsorts yet repelled by the black licorice.  Hours of fun watching them try to navigate that one.

I had also adapted my french fry eating.  I started by putting vinegar on them.  Unfortunately, the kids adapted too, and developed a taste for vinegar.  I recently upped the ante and started using malt vinegar.  Success.  They hate it. This does require that we frequent higher end french fry establishments where the stuff is available, but so worth it for me to enjoy a carton of fries all to myself.

As for quiet reading time?  The solution is simple.  Opera.  I play opera in my quiet space.  If I need to crank it to drown out their noises, so be it.  This is also fascinating to watch, as they scuttle around a seemingly invisible barrier, preventing them from entering My Space.  Lovely.

I went to visit my parents last weekend, and I had always been under the illusion that I had been a perfect child, a delight to be around (teenager is another story).  I couldn’t help but notice though that in their pantry was a years’ worth supply of black licorice, a Costco sized bottle of malt vinegar, and opera was perpetually being pumped throughout the entire first floor of their house.

Huh.