Where has all simplicity gone, long time passing. Where has all simplicity gone, long, long time ago. Where has all simplicity gone, Corona destroyed it everyone. When will we get it back? When will we get it back?

This may be a crude attempt to poke fun at an old folk song but I mean it. Life used to be so simple. Meals for instance. Breakfast was the defined as the meal which was most important, but nobody eats. In my house breakfast time consists of setting up, and turning on the coffeemaker, and then making lunch. Now one never eats that lunch at breakfast time. That would be stupid. No, you put that lunch in a bag, box, or reusable plastic container, depending on your tax bracket. Next, as the coffee aroma fills the kitchen, you search for your favorite To-Go mug. A few minutes later you look at the time on your phone, decide you are running late, exit the house without packed lunch or coffee, and drive away. Depending on when I remember what I forgot I might come back for the lunch but always end up getting coffee someplace else. What happens to the coffee I made? Who knows? But the important fact is, this is what I used to call Breakfast.

Now along with the everybody else, I am in self quarantine. This means, when I make coffee, I don’t leave the house. I stay right there. I don’t need to swear as I search for a travel mug because I can set my coffee on the table. The worst part was I was home for better than a week before I stopped packing my lunch at six am. When at home I could munch on something better so in fridge there still sits nine beautifully packed lunches which no one touches and are getting older by the moment. If you’ve ever made egg salad, you’ll know it ages rapidly. 

That’s another thing, when at home lunch has lost all meaning, because I can snack. In cubicle 16-C snacking was forbidden. I’m told they kept a dragon in the basement instead of a furnace. Anyone caught snacking was fed to the dragon. Even though that may have been a myth I wasn’t taking any chances. I just remember Helen. She always had cookies in her desk and could be counted on to share. Then one day Helen disappeared and the building was substantially warmer for three days. Helen always did carry a few extra pounds. Truth or fiction? You decide.

Dragon or no, I now snack throughout the day. The issue with that is we never bought proper snacks before. Everything was geared to my, or my children’s lunches. Would you like to know just how many of those mini bags of chips you can eat in a sitting when you don’t have to get back to work?  Trust me, you don’t want to know. And what about Little Debbie cakes? A box of those used to last a week or so. Now, they are set upon like meat given to starving piranhas, as soon as they enter the door. My wife has started a harsher rationing program than in World War II.

Ya know, I just thought of a question; With everyone at home and nowhere to go, sleeping habits have gotten a bit lax. So, if my son wakes up at ten and microwaves some leftover spaghetti, is it late breakfast, early lunch, or a snack? I mean, on one hand it is the first meal of the day. On the other hand, he’s eating lunch food. I’m out of hands, so on my right foot, the time definitely says snack. On the other foot, well frankly when I picked up the other foot I fell down and hurt myself. I checked for broken bones, soaked in a hot tub, and then resumed thinking.

You see all this becomes important because we are supposed to eat three balanced meals a day and two healthy snacks. It was easy when we got up at six and went to bed at ten, but now there are no bed times, no rise times and many naps. How do we maintain our nutritional standards? We’re gonna have chaos before for long. What if my son rejected the concept of meals altogether, and just ate nine snacks in a day? It would be anarchy. Vegetable farmers around the world would be replaced by Donut bakeries. (not that that would necessarily be a bad thing) But anyway, all those celebrity chefs would be swapped for some twenty-something instructing us like this; “Dude, ya add water and nuke it fer two minutes, and woah it’s Mac-N-Chiz”

Last night my wife made a beautiful meal at four-o’clock.  Why? I don’t know. When it was served, I sat down to eat. She got a phone call and had to do some work before she could rest. One of the kids was taking a nap, one had just finished lunch and wasn’t hungry, and one was taking their “morning” (?) shower. Consequently, there I was, sitting all by myself eating a wonderful meal and feeling guilty. My wife and the shower finished at the same time so they sat down next. The nap was over just after that, and Mr. Late Lunch had the meal an hour later. One family dinner, three hours. And can you guess who had to wait for them all to be done so he could do his “Kitchen Duty” night. Well let me tell you that after this fiasco the rules are going to change.

The first thing I did was to ask my wife if I could make some new rules. I always check first. It’s just easier in the long run. Second, I established rigid meal times. These were immediately altered, because of my wife’s work from home schedule and my son’s work away from home schedule.

Next, I addressed the issue of too many snacks. It was my daughter who spoke up and informed us all that they were happy to go without snacks if I could. So much for my dictatorship. I thought I didn’t have too many snacks but I they had documented evidence that I had had six snacks yesterday and seven the day before that. They all glared at me. All of them happy to eat less snacks if I did. Well, what could I say? The point was dropped like a hot potato… with cheese, broccoli, and bacon bits. Yumm!

So, I set upon the last rule I could very hard. I told them all that there was too much sleeping. We needed appropriate bed times and rise times to make sure the work got done. My lovely wife rolled her eyes. And I asked, What?? She informed she was working from home and it mostly didn’t matter when she worked. All the kid’s homework was going, just fine. They were also communicating with their teachers. It was then noted that I had nothing specific to do. Sometimes I even wrote at two in the morning and napped all afternoon.

Once again I was the chief offender. To say the least the conversation went from bad to worse, until my wife rescinded my ability to make rules.

Well, all’s well that ends well. The family decided that I should no longer be quarantined. I am now under House Arrest.

Man, this ankle bracelet isn’t very flattering at all.