From my old blog Surviving Empty Nest, reprinted here for your reading enjoyment.
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This morning I solved another case of What Did the Kids Do While I and the Rest of America Slept: They ate $150 worth of food and drank a half gallon of milk and a bunch of Diet Pepsis and Frappuccinos.
Because I currently have two adult children under my roof, my family is split evenly between day walkers and the nocturnal ones. My husband and I get up at 5 a.m. and go nonstop until we fall asleep in front of whatever 9 o’clock show is on. The kids, however, get up sometime between noon and late afternoon, start out slow, gain momentum around 11 p.m. and build to an energy peak at around 4 a.m.
So after dinner (which is their late brunch) my husband and I go to bed and the kids still have a couple of meals to get through before they call it a day.
When I get up in the morning and walk into the kitchen, I feel like Bones arriving at a crime scene.This plate has remnants of fried eggs, but the skillet is saying ‘meat byproduct’ . . . There are four empty Mountain Dew bottles, so it’s possible some outsiders were brought in . . . oh and thank god someone ate that leftover rice. It was 3 hours away from being turquoise.
I remember not that long ago, I was putting food in front of them at the dinner table when it was still light out, pouring everyone a big glass of 2% milk and that was that. After dishes were done, the kitchen stayed cleaned up until the next morning.
Now, the mess that they leave (and that’s another story for another time. Feel free to chime in and tell me what a loser mom I am for allowing my kids to not wash their own dishes. You’ll get no argument from me) is like reading their diaries. Once, my daughter made eggs with her boyfriend and I was so confused. There were the eggy dishes in the dishwasher but I didn’t remember putting them there . . . If someone ate eggs, where was the spatula? Where was the pan?
“Did you guys make eggs?” I asked them.
Yes, they said. They made eggs.
“Where’s the pan?”
The boyfriend was a little taken aback by my shrill, cracking voice.
It hadn’t occurred to me that somewhere there was a woman who had a grown son who washed his dishes when he was done cooking. Or that I might have the good fortune to have that son come over to my house and cook with my daughter.
But how does his mom know anything about him?
