The opening of the cupboards.
It’s a thing at our house. A daily ritual, if you will. Because, no matter how many healthy choices I make during the day, any bit of self-control I posess seems to literally disintegrate by mid-afternoon. I’m talkin’ every single day. And so, I give you, the opening of the cupboards. It’s when I trudge into the kitchen after a really long day with the kids, grasp the cupboard doors firmly, throw them open with reckless abandon, staring adoringly at the contents inside, and declare, “Come to mama, you.”
Yes, the opening of the cupboards. It starts promptly at 8 pm at our house. You know, after the kids are soundly asleep.
Hahahahahaha. Just kidding. My kids are never soundly asleep by 8. So, the ceremony actually begins whenever the kids finally stop getting out of bed to go potty, or screaming because their sock came off, or falling off the giant tower of stuffed animals built in attempt to climb into the baby’s crib. Let’s be real, most nights, I just begin WHILE this is all happening, because the days are long and I NEED THIS.
And by ‘this,’ I mean throwing all self-control to the wind and stuffing my face with as much junk food from the cupboards as possible while staring blankly at the TV, because my thinker can’t think no mo’, let alone make wise choices.
And on days when my children are especially unruly, I bypass the cupboard opening all together. Instead, as I’m staring into the cupboards by 3 pm, wondering why I thought clearing the house of chocolate would stop me from doing whatever it takes to get it, I realize the only rational thing for me to do is to pack the kids up into the car and head to Target in order to right this wrong.
As soon as I get there, I distract the kids with a bag of goldfish and fill up the cart with my own unmentionables. And then, I go through self-checkout to hide the shame of the items in tow. Other times, I just don’t even care what the cashier thinks of my two gallons of ice cream, slice of pie, and jalapeno chips, because, at this point, nothing could be worse than the events leading up to this very moment (let’s just say, they often involve poop, and it’s never my own).
Other days, when the cupboards are bare, and the thought of getting myself and the chidren to the store sounds about as fun as climbing Mt. Everest after three years of no sleep, I settle for a bowl filled with chocolate chips or the baby’s Gerber snack cookies.
Desperate times, ya’ll. Desperate times.
It’s not that I’m proud of this nightly cupboard raid. I’m really, really not. Every single morning, I start my day determined to turn over a new leaf. I flip through my Instagram feed and vow to be the next “bikini body guide” success story. I go to the grocery store and fill my cart with quinoa and fresh veggies, snubbing the Oreos as we pass, because, Mari is my name and clean eating is my game. As of, just now.
I go home, make myself some avocado egg toast for lunch, stealing only a bite or two of my kids’ mac n’ cheese, and pulling the ground turkey out of the freezer to thaw for a healthy dinner.
I do want to be better, you know? I do, I really do. And so today, after I eat four bites of chicken and some spinach for lunch, I will pack up the kids and go to the store. But this time, the only thing I’m going to buy is zip-ties. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll zip-tie the cupboards shut. I will end this awful habit once and for all.
And when my husband walks through the front door tonight and sees what I’ve done, I’ll only have one thing to say to him.
“You turn around, and you get back in that car Mr., and don’t come back without a cookie dough blizzard and some wire cutters.”
My diet starts tomorrow.
