Jenn is convinced I'm being unreasonable.

[conuly]

I was starting to make dinner, and Ana got into a snit because there wasn't a spare burner for her to make her Nestlé Mexican hot chocolate she had picked up at the corner store. I say that 8 ounces of chocolate milk - that's 256 calories, I went ahead and checked - is a dessert or a snack, not something she should be preparing right before dinner.

Jenn seems to think that drinks don't count, that they don't take up any space in the stomach that could go to actual food.

She also thinks that my occasionally buying 20 oz of soda to split among four people while eating pizza is comparable to each person getting 8 full ounces of hot chocolate. Never mind that that is 60% more to drink!

Then, of course, she pulled a classic Jenn trick of alternating between snapping and bitching at me or talking to me about something unrelated like she hadn't just done that, and got pissy and called me an "asshole" for telling her to knock it off. Yeah, when I am working at a hot stove, using a knife, I don't really want to chit-chat to somebody who is off-and-on angry at me. I cut and burn myself enough when I'm calm, happy, and by myself!

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Chocolate right before supper? No frickin' way! In what alternate Universe was that ever acceptable? Whether food is liquid or solid when one ingests it doesn't matter; it's all reduced to liquid in the stomach.

Children have no business messing about the stove when an adult is trying to cook. In my household, nobody is allowed in the food-preparation area but the person preparing the food - that includes me staying strictly out when my daughter is cooking. YMMV; if I were you, I'd be responding with a long and detailed rant of the self-righteous guilt-tripping variety, titled "Here Iz Me Doing My Best To Provide You With Good Healthy Food While You Sabotage My Efforts With This Childish, Irrational Interference", which would doubtless affect the supper rather adversely.

By ancient tradition, disrespecting the Cook is the way to become the next Cook. It might get the point across if you just abandoned a meal in mid-preparation - let someone else finish, or let 'em eat chocolate, ramen noodles, whatever. If Jenn isn't going to back you up about reasonable standards of nutrition, or insist that the girls respect your work-space and show appreciation for your cooking instead of bitching about it, why keep doing this? I'd say they were treating you like a servant, and servants who are treated that way quit.

"She also thinks that my occasionally buying 20 oz of soda to split among four people while eating pizza is comparable to each person getting 8 full ounces of hot chocolate.

Obviously it's not, but even if it was, how is that even relevant? Does Jenn want you to stop buying them soda? It doesn't make any sense to say "I don't like it that you buy them soda; therefore I condone their disrupting your cooking supper to demand chocolate" - especially if she never objected to the soda until now. In any case, agreeing not to buy the stuff any more seems like a pretty minor concession, but if they won't agree to respect your cooking, stop cooking for them.

[conuly]

Thank you, I'm pretty sure I just won $13 and an infinite supply of "I told you so". She was sure nobody would agree with me when I posted this.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

So, now you can afford to buy pizza, right? *ducking*

'Kay, here's my continuing thought, because $13.00 and I-told-you-so isn't going to suffice. What's Jenn really upset about? Because it seems like when she does this, it's generally not that she's really mad at *you*, or is trying to be a bitch, but that she's having a hard time with parenting and/or work and/or Life, the Universe and everything; y'know how that goes.

Didn't you have a tiff just about the same as this, last year at just about this time? Maybe your sister's got Seasonal This-Sucks Disorder, and feels bad because she knows she *should* enforce the healthy nutrition and blah blah, but all she wants herself is chocolate and carbs, and ohgawdpuhleese to not have to listen to her kids twitching out about yet another stupid thing. It's hard to maintain standards when the days are getting short and chill, and times iz hard, and one's daughters are doing that prepubescent thing all the time, and... and... and.

Motherhood is a permanent condition of doubt and guilt about whether one's doing it right; Jenn may be just feeling kinda stomped by it, temporarily unable to care what her kids eat for supper, if only they don't throw a fit, and dissing herself for feeling that way. But we all feel that way sometimes. Motherhood is awesome, but it also sucks, there's no getting around it. So don't I-told-you-so Jenn too hard, because she may be feeling bad enough already, and could do with a sympathetic ear.