Cereal: The New Currency

Months ago I put a moratorium on cereal.  Cereal is rather expensive, and this crew consumes it at an alarming rate.  In fact, if one of them finds a box of cereal in the house, that person will sit right down and shovel in three quarters of the box in approximately five minutes.  No joke.  I’ve watched it happen.  If there is cereal around, they will sneak it when they are not supposed to be eating it.  They’ll waste the cereal milk and because they’ve been sneaky, they’ll stash the bowl away in a closet or drawer or on a shelf somewhere, and weeks later I’ll find the bowl with a bunch of curdled milk on it, and really, I had just been through this enough that I declared, “NO CEREAL.”

There are some mornings when I really wish I did have a box of cereal to feed them breakfast, but I have been surviving just fine.  And so have they.  (One of their grandparents did take pity on them and gifted them each a box a few weeks ago, and I did break down and give them a box of cereal for an Easter present).

I love to read.  There is hardly anything more refreshing than a few hours to spend reading a book.  About two weeks ago now, a Saturday morning rolled around, and not that much was going on.  There were a lot of things I COULD have done, but there was nothing that I NEEDED to do right then, so I cuddled up in my bed and plowed through a book.  Two hours later I was about ten pages from the end, and sure enough, my calculating husband came roaring in and tried to snatch my book.  He has a knack for that, and it drives me crazy!  Ten pages from the end and I’m chasing him around yelling and pleading to get my book back.

I did get the book back, and I settled in to read again, but not more than five minutes later ALL FOUR kidlets stormed my bed, and four kidlets trying to steal a book is just too many kidlets trying to steal a book.  I couldn’t fend them off.  They took the book.  It turns out their father, the rat, had bribed them with full boxes of cereal if they kidnapped my novel.

Sigh.

My reading habits may well tell be ruined.

However, I did put the new cereal currency to the test this last Wednesday, when I struck a deal with YaYa.  Someone had squirted hand lotion all over the walls, floor, mirror, toilet and sink in the basement bathroom.  I offered her a box of multi-grain Cheerios if she cleaned it all up, and she accepted.