It's a stupid question. Really.

Last night I asked the kids what they wanted to have for dinner.
"MARSHMALLOWS," they screamed.

I had to admire the simplicity... and the fact that they knew exactly what they wanted... they also wanted them for lunch... they've wanted marshmallows all the time ever since we got back from our camp trip. I was so tired I actually considered tossing them the bag and telling them to knock themselves out. Then I thought about trying to put two kids with an extreme sugar high to bed and it just made me want to cry. So I took a deep breath and told them we'd be having grilled teriyaki chicken with rice and baby carrots (the only healthy meal I could come up with that required minimal effort - leftovers - but, technically not for them) and they were all upset and whiny... as expected... as if I were offering dog food.

Anyway, I set down these really lovely plates of food and, of course, once they started eating they kept going on and on about how much they love carrots, and Alex kept saying, "I really love this chicken dipped in the sauce -it's yummy", and Max was inhaling the rice saying, "this is just too good!"

Then I made the mistake of trying to talk to them about being thankful for food and how lucky we were to be eating such a nice meal and that lots of people in the world weren't so lucky. Max was looking at me with these huge eyes and I thought he was really interested in what I was saying. Then he kept making all kinds of other weird-non-appropriate expressions with his face and I realized that he was completely bored with me and was just trying to entertain himself. He does that often.

But for some reason (I desperately miss adult conversation -it's been almost two weeks since Dan's been gone) I went on and on about food and then it morphed into how I grew up with Tang (which I actually thought was orange juice) and Shake-n-Bake chicken (which I actually thought was BBQ chicken)... and how Tootie didn't cook much so a lot of times we just had cereal for dinner and I thought for sure Max would shout, "I love cereal for dinner!" because that's what we had the night before and it's a pretty rare thing here so he liked the novelty; but instead he just looked at me with these tired eyes that said, "shut-it, woman and just let me eat." So I did... and at that point they had completely forgotten about the marshmallows... and it was bedtime.