Okay, I'm going to get real tonight. You will feel better about your own mothering. I promise. I am going to let you in on one of my biggest failings. It is something my husband will shake his head at, and my very healthy and active family and friends have probably long suspected, but I am a Fast Food Drive-Thru Queen. Someday I will be a healthy and active person too, but not now. It's just "not my season". (This is acceptable Christian homemaker lingo that releases us from self-inflicted guilt. I am all for it.) Some day it will be my exercise-regularly-and-drink-arrugala-smoothie season, but for now it is my know-every-value-menu-between-Enchanted-Forest-and-Intel-season.
I'm good at it. There is a real science to ordering for a family of 7 (now 8), which I hate to say, my husband has not yet mastered. You never pull up and just throw out one person's order and then wait for the rest of the car to figure it out, adding a burger here or a fry there. This causes confusion and panic and invariably, tears from the back seat, and is also rude to the person taking the order. Instead, always, always yell at everybody as you are pulling into the parking lot, letting them know where you are (because their heads have been buried in their electronic devices and they will be clueless and dazed), and let them know the price limit, telling them to figure it out NOW.
There are 3 cars ahead of you, and you want their decisions by the time there is only one. Then, when you do pull up, you can rattle off in an orderly fashion: 2 bacon cheddar McChickens, 6 cheese burgers, 1 cheeseburger Happy Meal for a boy child with chocolate milk to drink, and 6 regular McChickens. Then they tell you to please pull forward into the burger purgatory space because your order will take a little more time. Once you have your order, you instruct the child in the front passenger seat to count how many sandwiches and fries you've been given. If the number matches up, you move on--it doesn't even matter if it is the correct type as long as there is enough. You just go with it. Don't push your luck! Then, and only then, pull out of the lot. And that is how it's done, Folks.
How? How could it come to this? (I know I am now officially fallen from any pedestal that I may have been wrongfully placed on.)
Tonight, I, myself, was forced to admit how bad it has gotten lately. My two middle schoolers and I were on our way 45 minutes north to a special youth group event. We needed a quick dinner. I mentally ran through my options and decided that our home town McDonald's would be faster than our mid-way Arby's (cheaper too. Bonus!) I informed them of their price limit and my son remembered a bogo offer on an old receipt if we just called and completed a survey for a code. I handed my daughter the receipt and my phone and told her to go for it. If she could get the code by the time it was our turn, they could order the "good stuff". Well, it was a very thorough survey. We didn't make it. But it did bring to light how ridiculously often we'd eaten at fast food in the past 30 days. (Really, you should know it's bad when you are in line at McDonald's with a still fresh Arby's ice tea in you cup holder.) But officially admitting that you are in the top bracket for how many times you've eaten fast food in the past 30 days is very humbling.
"Don't fill in the 'other' space", I panic and tell my daughter when they want to know which places we've been. "We've already told them enough!" Not my proudest moment.
While this practice is not good or socially or politically or medically accepted, I feel like I've had my reasons. Now, I will admit that while it is true we are not even doing sports right now, so I don't have that excuse, I do have a few excuses that I will share such as.....a brand new baby. And if I need to add to that: home schooling, co-op teaching, youth group hosting, unending dental, orthodontia, and medical appointments, birthday parties and graduations and even a hospitalization that have all been a part of our spring.
So, this is my season: Survival. Imperfection. Chaos. Blessings. French Fries. Large ice teas. Gluten. Let my failures encourage you who are actually handling the craziness with much more preparedness and grace. And let my failures encourage those of you who can relate that you are not alone. Someday I might just get my act together. But for now we will pray the Tim Hawkins prayer: Lord change the molecular make-up of this junk to that of a carrot.
I guess we'll just have to use that coupon code next time.
