Because it really is personal…

Talking to #4 is an experience rich with superlatives and exhortation and irrefutable logic.

RT: “#4, please take your basket of (clean, fresh, folded)clothes to your room and put them in your dresser.”

#4:”OHH MOMMMM EVERYTHING YOU SAY JUST MAKES ME MISERABLE AND SAD!”

RT:”darlin, it’s in the contract. Paragraph 12 subsection D:’Mothers are required by law to make their minor children work and suffer to earn the right to cheeze-its.’ Look it up, it’s there.”

#4:”OOOOooooo…..Mommm…I’m sad. You shouldn’t make me sad. Children are supposed to be happy.”

RT: “Oh no, children are supposed to be obedient, which makes parents happy, which makes them give children Cheeze-Its, and then children are happy. So obedience makes children happy.”

#4: *pause* (thoughtful look)”but…uh…Ok.”

Cue the sound of slamming drawers and grumbling child.

I have sick people in my house. Not egregiously sick, just the standard “I’m a Public School Student Who Breathes Unclean Air and Sits Next To Unwashed Heathen” sort of sick. You know the drill, coughing up green things that look like a science experiment gone awry, standing next to my left arm with a grim look on his face, occasionally flopping on the floor and moaning pathetic, calf-like moans. Can you tell my children are male? They are the embodiment of every masculine stereotype, when sick. My consolation is the only cartoons on tv this time of day are aimed at 2 yr olds. My boys, they are watching BooBahs and commenting on their hallucinogenic properties.

So, because I am a Good Mother, Who Loves Her Children More Than Life and Gin, I decided to make Chicken Soup. I do it always when someone is sick, because it makes me feel special and they feel like I am doing something marvelous for them.

Recently I came across a recipe for

. It’s not terribly different from the soup I make, except that the meat and onions are browned and he has this tedious step of scooping the foam. Since I started in at 7 this morning, I figure it will be done sometime in the middle of the night and I can make everyone get up and try it. Snice they try to get me up to show me the green thing that looks like a rat fetus that they coughed up.

Boys take pride in the strangest things.

Anyway, I am currently in the foam scooping phase of the process, and already the soup smells AWESOME! The whole notion of browning the chicken and onions never occurred to me, and I tell you what, even this little bit into the process the whole house smells amazing.

Note to the Author of

, I am putting noodles in the soup. I have to. I went to all 3 grocery stores in this heathen little borough and while I can buy all the pad thai mix and Abuelata drink mix and bottles of Juilieta soda I could want, there was not even one sad, dusty little box of mahtzo mix, crackers, or even Manischewitz Pancake Syr…um…Kosher wine. I asked an efficient looking individual who gave me a blank stare as if I’d asked for dried wood ears or kaffir limes. So. I am going to trust that God Almighty meant what He said when telling me I didn’t have to worry about kosher anymore. Egg noodles it is.

#3 just staggered in and asked if I was aware there was a plate in the soup. Yes indeed, I cheerily replied, It’s Plate Soup. Hum, he mumbled. whatever.