Author Meredith Masony Knows Feeding Kids Can Break Any Mom's Bank (and Sanity)
In her new book, Ask Me What's For Dinner One More Time: Inappropriate Thoughts on Motherhood, Meredith Masony discusses the universal frustrations of parenthood and shares her laugh-out-loud perspective on sex, aging, anxiety, friendship, and much more. Below, the author and mother of five vents about the time of day every parent dreads: snack time.
I love food, but I hate grocery shopping. I don’t dislike the grocery store. I am at the grocery store at least twice a week. This is not an exaggeration, I promise you that. I make one trip on Sundays where I stock up on everything I need for school lunches, Sunday dinner, and meals with my codependent relatives (Eric, Trey, and their son Mason; we eat together four nights a week), and then I am usually back by Thursday. Thursday’s shopping trip includes all the shit I forgot on Sunday and usually Preparation H hemorrhoid wipes. For some reason my hemorrhoids usually flare on the weekends, for obvious reasons.
I know I have a family of five and five people eat a lot, but why do my children eat this much? Who the hell needs to snack like this? I am pretty sure the reason I hate grocery shopping is because I know that the second I get home, my kids will grab 98 percent of what I purchased and eat it within five minutes of being home. And then in ten minutes they will come up to me and say, “Can I have a snack?”
FOR. THE. LOVE. The sentence “Can I have a snack?” makes my blood boil. Before having kids, I had no idea how much children ate. I mean, I really had no idea I would buy so much granola, Quaker Oats should sponsor me. I feel like someone should follow me around and when I am picking up the damn granola bar wrappers from between the couch cushions a voice-over actor should say, “This cleanup session was brought to you by Quaker Oats. Click the link for your coupon.”
I spend so much money on fruit cups, yogurt, granola bars, crackers, and fruit. For the most part, my kids eat relatively healthy snacks, but after an apple, a granola bar, a bowl of Goldfish crackers, two string cheeses, and a Go-GURT, how on earth is their appetite not quenched? Seriously?? I need to know! How are they still hungry?
The best part is when I tell them that dinner is about 15 minutes away and they fall to the ground, exclaiming that they are going to starve to death. Really??? GIVE ME A BREAK, KID, YOU WILL NOT STARVE! Dinner arrives and they poke their fork at the pork chop on their plate and say, “I’m not really hungry.” WHAT? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY? Child, look at me! You are going to eat that entire pork chop or I can guarantee that the programming you just tuned in to is intended for mature audiences only and will end with a mother holding a flip-flop in one hand and her poor life choices in the other. Five minutes after dinner is done . . . “Can I have a snack?”
Before having children, I would have never thought that the word snack would elicit such a visceral reaction from my body. It is almost like being stabbed with a thousand needles all at once. Maybe you think that is a bit of an overreaction, but come back and let me know how you feel about the word snack after an eight-week summer vacation with three kids who you are positive have a six-foot tapeworm living inside their bellies.
From "ASK ME WHAT’S FOR DINNER ONE MORE TIME: Inappropriate Thoughts on Motherhood" by Meredith Masony. Copyright © 2020 by Inside the Bowl Productions, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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