You shouldn’t eat donuts for breakfast on Monday morning.

The girl who lives at my house offered me the following advice today:

“You shouldn’t eat donuts for breakfast on Monday morning.”

She said this while she was eating non-sugared whole grain cereal with blueberries and non-fat milk.  I took a moment to review my “mommy response repertoire” to see what I had to say to this uncalled for, unasked for and ugly statement. 

This is the child who willingly eats vegetables.  She demands them.  She knows their names.  “When are we going to have vegetables?  How about broccoli?”  Broccoli?  I guess that’s a vegetable.  How crazy is that!  I’d swear she wasn’t mine except that she never left my sight once I painfully gave birth to her and took her home from the hospital.  But I digress. . .

Anyway, I dug down deep inside myself – to the core of my mommyness and said, wait for it . . .  “Really?”  What else can one say when one is possibly about to be denied one of the three food groups?

She took a deep breath and let out a very long sad sigh.  “Yes. Really.” 

Clearly, she was not going to let me finish my donut breakfast in peace.  “Ummmmmm, why?”

This is the child who does not suffer fools gladly.  She gathered up her empty cereal bowl and spoon and took them to the sink.  She went over to the refrigerator and took out her lunch and placed it in her lunch box.  She then gathered up her water bottle (We live in the desert and you can’t leave home without water, except I do all the time, which annoys the girl because then I drink hers, but anyway, I digress, again.) filled it with ice and water and put it in her book bag.

Having not received a respone to “Ummmmmm, why?” I started to panic a little.  I always panic when she stops talking.  Her not talking is never a good sign.  It means trouble is about to come, real trouble, trouble for me.  When I panic, I start to babble.  What to say? What to say?” OMG – talk before she does Ava!  What were we talking about? What was the issue?  No donuts on Monday – that’s it!  Monday, I’ll talk about Monday!  I won’t talk about the donut.  I’m starting to sweat . . . say anything before she does. 

“Why not Monday?”  Is there a national law I don’t know about?”  I blurted out. 

She looked me right in the eyes, sighed again and spoke very slowly, “You should not eat donuts at all for breakfast – on any day.  Mondays are especially bad because after your system crashes from just eating sugar, it could set the tone for the entire day and aren’t Monday’s bad enough already?”  She held my gaze for a second longer to be sure I understood and turned to go upstairs to finish getting ready for school. 

“Well, ummmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, can I eat them on Saturday?”  I said this really low so she wouldn’t hear me after she left the kitchen.  I crammed the rest of my delicious chocolate covered donut in my mouth.  I raced to the box of donuts, shoved one in a zip lock baggy and secreted it away in the girl’s lunch box.  Ha!