Homework

when I was a kid -- how many stories start like that? -- when I was a kid, I just did my damn homework. I came home from school at 5:00pm and went directly into my room and didn't emerge until my homework was done. Sometimes I had dinner with my parents and sometimes if they were going out then I got to eat dinner in front of the television. That doesn't sound good. No more memories like that please

Now as a result of Kate's cavalier attitude about her homework; school is boring, homework is boring, everything is boring....Arnie gets to take over supervision of her homework. They review her assignment book and then review the finished work together. Which I think is brilliant.

I knew there was something else I wanted to rant about. And it was dinner. Here too I keep harking back to my own childhood. I ate what was put in front of me. Grudgingly and probably haltingly. But I ate it. And when my parents ate really disgusting stuff like kidneys or pigs feet they let me off the hook. I ate something benign. So in my effort to avoid gastronomic ennui I try to provide a wide variety of foods but this is probably more for Arnie and for me than for Kate who seems to thrive on Mac n cheese. She would eat that 5 times a day, 5 days a week. God knows. Actually she is an eater from the 1950's. Add lamb chops, pork chops, steak to her list of preferred foods and you are home free. Last night I tried a vietnamese dish with a chicken soup cooked with ginger and rice, side dish of poached chicken with a great dipping sauce of lime juice, ginger and nam pla....Yuck said my daughter. Well she said nothing but contorted her little face into a classic moue of dispair, distaste and disregard.
How could she not eat a soup that was practically congee? somehow I was really cranky about that last night and when I found her supplementing her daily food intake with an apple, ginger ale and cheecans....I took them away. Ok, I'm over it now.