Things You Can Count On, Recession Version

Things You Can Count On; When You Act on the Bright Side:

a) Since your husband is home,  so you can now enjoy The Family Dinner.

b) Look at you -- all rolling with the punches, all Miss Looking on The Bright Side!

c) Rice and peas do not like dust busters or brooms or sponges and chicken bones are incredibly aerodynamic.

d) Your daughter will consider a piece of chicken the size of newborn babies thumb nail to be a "bite" but she will never put said bite into her mouth. 

e) You will not feel any less or any more happy about this than you did when you paced the kitchen floor (alone) during the "old" dinner hour.

f) If a child finds a clove in some basmati rice, the rice will be instantly tainted and inedible. And thrown.

g) And then someone will use the words butt and poop.

h)  And then someone will want to cry and swear. It will be you.

i) In theory, The Family Dinner is an excellent idea but you will soon believe that theories are nothing but junk science.

j) You will feel nostalgia.

Things You Can Count On; Two At-Home Parents Will Make Twice as Many Mistakes:

a) Your children are excellent manipulators who can play you both like 12-string guitars.

b) Though these skills may benefit them someday, you have only five words for them now: Game On Short Drunk People!

c) You and your husband will plot many strategies to improve the general behavior (coats on the floor, wrappers on the floor, butt jokes at dinner time) and high five your all-around parenting genius.

d) You will do this while in the car driving to see David Sedaris on a Monday night in another state and be too tired to enact any of your Big Ideas the next day.

e) Still, you remain the Meanest Parents in the World because you will not allow a nine year old to have a cell phone.

f) Since he is home and up against her negotiating tactics, your husband will get suckered into compromising with a nine year old and allowing her an email address. You will take half the credit, unfairly, and feel very, very nice -- for once.

g) One week later, you will be told in no uncertain terms by a professional educator that what you have done is the Worst. Thing. Ever.

h) You will consider throwing all the machines into the ocean. 

i) Your husband will tell you to "relax"and you will be simultaneously annoyed and also relieved that at least some things haven't changed.

Things You Can Count On; Oh Yeah! The Budget!:

a) Oprah and that annoying Suze lady will tell you to make a "worst case scenario" budget. So, you will talk about making one. 

b) You will talk about it a lot in very short bursts.

c) You will order overpriced Indian food and eat too much of it and too fast.

d) You prefer not to plan for a future that is more bleak than any future you have ever planned for before. You used to plan for the best and prepare for the worst. Now, you're supposed to plan for the worst and get ready to laugh your ass off if your plans were in ironic vain. 

e) You really hope you get to laugh your ass off. 

Things You Can Count On; You Might Be Surprised:

a) You will share knowing smirks with your husband more often than ever. The knowing smirks will say "our kids are cute" and "our kids are funny" and "our kids are brilliant" and "are you as glad as me that she is finally wearing a ponytail?"

b) You will have time to talk about things other than the cute, funny, brilliant, hair-challenged Short Drunk People at the end of the day, because he already knows that stuff. You can now talk about a wide variety of very important things: reality TV, quantum physics, the meaning of life, and other people.

c) You will solve the problems of other people A LOT.

d) You will laugh more than you have in a while. You will piss into the wind. You will forget the budget and take everyone for sandwiches and bags of chips and extra pickles please. 

e) You will mutually decide that more often than not a butt or poop joke is, in fact, funny.

f) You will wake in the morning and know exactly what the other is thinking, which is romantic but also mostly just a practical, fake-psychic kind of ESP.

g) Because it's obvious that you will both wake in the morning and think at the same time: "what's gonna happen today?" and though you will have different guesses and ultimately different answers, you will feel a new kind of camaraderie in your mutual unknowingness.

h) When you wake, you will think as you did a few million years ago, as you did when you met and moved in and married: you can be anything, do anything, go anywhere.

Things You Can Count On; Reality Kisses:

a) Just as you are waking and plotting your life in Thailand or Mexico or New Zealand, just as you are packing the virtual life into a duffel bag with wheels, your son will brush your cheek.

b) Your son will be followed by your daughter. 

c) You will be asked to answer a question you have never imagined: "why are softballs bigger than baseballs?"

d) You won't know the answer.

e) You will shove your husband, an elbow to his flank.

f) Before the sun comes up, you will consider the cost of a college education and what your own was worth and how grateful you are to have never worried about paying for it and you will say the only thing you can summon:

g) You will say, "Waffles?" to your kids in lieu of answering the question.

h) And he will mutter, "With cream cheese or syrup?"