Time Rift at Dinner

I welcomed in the first working day of the new year with a migraine, my first in a very long time.  I conjecture that it was caused by doing work (prolonged gazing at the computer screen) for the first time in four weeks.  By mid-afternoon, I knew I needed help, so I asked the two older kids to make dinner, a menu of meat loaf and baked zucchini sticks.

By dinnertime, the migraine was partially controlled by massive doses of ibuprofen, so I was able to be at dinner with the rest of the family.  That made me grateful.

Me:  Thank you, Older Daughter, for making the meat loaf.

Son:  You forgot to make it in a loaf shape.

He is correct – it was just flat in the 9x9 inch square pan.  It is more like a meat slab.  But as a mother, I knew that I must ignore this, and in fact need to encourage my children to do things on their own, even if the first effort is not the way I would have done it myself.

Husband, voicing his suspicions about the meatloaf:  Is this made out of named meat or unnamed meat?* 

Me:  It’s half ground beef and half ground turkey.  Both lower fat. 

Husband harumphs, because he knows that I am attempting to get him to lower the fat in his diet.  He doesn’t like it.  I decide to steer the conversation in a different direction. 

Me:  Son really went above and beyond, because he cooked the zucchini, which he does not even like.

Husband:  Well, sometime he might have to build a bridge he is not going to drive on.

Younger Daughter:  Or he might have to build a time machine that will not alter his own time line.

(Someone has been watching too much Doctor Who!)

Son:  But it is unlikely that I will have to build a bridge that I don’t like.

Older Daughter:  I am of the opinion that there are not many time lines, but time is a one-ribbon thing. 

Younger Daughter: No, every time you make a decision it makes another time line.

Husband:  Or time is like it is in Happy Accidents.

Me:  Dad really likes the movie Happy Accidents.  He likes it as much as I like the movie…

(At that moment I am struck with brain freeze and can’t think of the name of the movie that I love so much.  There aren’t that many of them; why is it so hard to remember it? The conversation continues for quite some time without contributions from me.)

Older Daughter:  Another movie Dad inexplicably likes is Sky High.  Mom, what movie do you like as much as Dad likes Sky High?

Me:  Babe.

Younger Daughter:  We should watch Babe again.

Me, brain suddenly unfrozen:  A Room With a View!  The movie I really like is A Room with a View.  I couldn’t think of it before because of my migraine.

Husband:  Your migraine is probably due to a rupture in the space-time continuum.

(Someone else has been watching too much Doctor Who!)

* * * * * * * *

Every problem in the world could be due to that rupture.  I think it also explains why I have been 5 minutes late to things ever since my kids were born.

Update:  Here is the recipe he used for the zucchini sticks:  Low-Fat Oven-Baked Zucchini Sticks.  They were really good, a hit with everyone except the person who cooked them.

* A reference to a line in some book by Terry Pratchett, whose style includes writing long asides in footnotes.  Terry Pratchett is very clever, and the Common Household often makes reference to “named” vs “unnamed” meat, but I don’t like his style of writing.  Then again, he probably wouldn’t like my style, so we’re even.