Jennifer and the Two Hundred Pound Raccoon

Jennifer and I usually go grocery shopping together. I used to do it all myself back in my SAHD + working all weekend days, then somehow she took it over for a long time. Now that the kids are old enough to be home alone, we sneak out together on shopping dates.

So anyway, yesterday…

Eggs were on sale. English muffins were on sale. Cheese was crazy on sale. Bacon was crazy on sale plus we had a coupon. See where I’m going with this?

This morning I’m up and awake at about 630am. No reason, just up, so I clear the email, plow the feed reader and do about two hours of reading and commenting on Talk About Marriage.

Eventually I become hungry.

Around 10am I check on Jennifer who is awake and still lying in bed and very clearly not cooking me breakfast. So I kiss her and playfully suggest she should be heading to the kitchen. I poke youngest daughter awake for good measure too or she’ll never fall asleep tonight.

I have my shower and once done I come back down to the smell of sizzling bacon and the makings of delicious bacon, egg and cheese on toasted english muffins. They are divine; as is she.

There’s a lot of leftover bacon though. So I suggest tonight we should have the beef, fresh bread and the salad makings for dinner… with the crumbled bacon in the salad. It’s far easier to get your wife to make you dinner if you know what’s in the fridge and ask for something actually possible to cook.

Jennifer: “Oh really?”

There’s actually a mildly testing tone here, as if to stay, “Dude! I just cooked breakfast for you and now you’re ordering dinner?”

Me: “Well we can’t just throw the leftover bacon away…”

That does kind of make sense and I just ignored her testing tone.

Me: “… Well. Not without me eating it out of the trash anyway.”

She laughs and says “Okay.” She can’t win a test against me if I make her laugh, so I make her laugh a lot. I tend to act like a raccoon around bacon and if you’re ever five feet tall fronting up against a two hundred pound raccoon, it’s best to just let the raccoon do whatever it wants to do.

So tonight for dinner we’re having grilled beef, fresh bread and a salad with little bits of bacon in it. She’ll probably cook, I’ll probably make the run out to get the bread. Might shop from the Redbox in the store and come home with a DVD too.

So if you’re ever strapped for an idea in the moment, just ask yourself, “What would a two hundred pound raccoon do?” (WWTHPRD?)  Then do that. You’d be surprised at how frequently it’s on point.