An Open Letter to Paige.......

Dearest Paige,

When packing your lunch in the mornings (like yesterday morning when your mommy was sick and slept in and you told your daddy "you could take care of it."), please pack something other than juice and applesauce to eat with your ice cream at lunch.  Not only is this an unhealthy lunch for a growing girl who needs a good meal in the middle of the day, it also makes your mother look like a complete ass - for several reasons:

1.  I'm a shitty mom and cannot pack a decent lunch for my kid;
2.  I'm the kind of mom that lets my kid take whatever he/she wants;
3.  We have no food and therefore, you have only applesauce to eat;
4.  I don't care that you gorge on ice cream Mondays and Thursdays instead of eating a healthy lunch; and, most importantly,

5.  It makes your mommy look like a jackass after she ripped the school lunch lady a new ass for not providing healthy enough lunches for the children of St. Joseph.

This means two things - I care about your nutrition, of course; and, how I look to the school lunch lady who I'm sure has been monitoring your lunches since my tirade last week.

In the future, it would mean a lot to me if you could include a sandwich and a piece of fruit in your lunch box. While I feel confident that the majority of your lunches will be packed by me in the future, there is always going to be those off days that you might need to do it yourself.  It would be a good idea to pack somewhat healthy items to offset the (sugar free) chocolate pudding you sometimes eat for breakfast.  The pudding wouldn't be such a big deal if Ms. Volker didn't see you scraping the bottom of the pudding cup when I stop to let you out of the Expedition every morning.  You see, Ms. Volker was also included on my very terse email to the aforementioned lunch lady and in my defense, it was the lunch lady who decided to include the school principal on her reply to me.  I took that as an act of war and responded appropriately :)

I understand you are too young to understand the politics of parenthood, school lunches and my position in the kingdom of indignant even when wrong.  Remember that regardless of the horrific lunch you packed for yourself yesterday (highlighted by your too long bangs and your somewhat too long fingernails), it is imperative that the lunch lady not win this battle and yesterday, well, you unwittingly helped the opposition.  Going forward, let's not allow something like this to happen again.  I know you can do it.

I love you my little Juicy of Love and Deliciousness,

Mommy