One Day You Will Appreciate Me

Sunday already? The weekend sure does fly by.

It snowed last night so my friend and I went over to Lifetime Fitness  instead of hitting the trail for a run. I split my workout between a variety of those elliptical type machines. There are so many different versions of those machines and I almost always risk being hit in the head with the mechanical swinging arms – and some people wonder why I choose to simply run outside?!

So the little man will be home tonight after he watches the Superbowl with his dad and back into the routine we will be. I better start meal planning and prepping for the week.

Speaking of meals, I am reminded of the text my tech savvy 9 year old sent me last night. He has been at his dad’s house all weekend so when I got a text from him, I was thinking how sweet it is that he wishes to say hello to me.

Well, he didn’t quite send me a text. It was a “pin”. From Pinterest. Can we discuss how kids today are so computer savvy that not only do they use Pinterest, they are able to text the pins they like from their tech devices. (I refuse to give him a cell phone at his age but he does have an itouch and ipad. So why I don’t just give him a phone I don’t know. Conversation for another day).

Uh huh. Yep. Uh huh. Yep.

My thoughts:

Hmm. Atleast he was thinking of me while away from home?

I was pleased to see that sh*t had the “*” instead of spelling it out. He might have gotten in trouble for reading this one aloud in his head. But since there was a “*”, I will let it slide.I was absolutely hysterical when I read this. I have a feeling he kinda sent it to me not so much to say, “look how funny this is”, but more like, “hahaha I am subtly making fun of you and your healthy Trader Joe’s foods and the lifestyle you keep trying to inflict on me”.

Make fun of me now but one day you will appreciate me.

Yes. One day he will appreciate the  jumbo pancakes I make for him from scratch before school (not just on weekends!) including chocolate chips.

For now though all he sees is my attempt to sneak some fruit into the meal.

I even bet he will remember 20 years from now the gigantic chocolate covered apples I made for his friends in the fall…

And maybe he will look back with fond memory of watching me run the Hershey Park Half Marathon…

I think I deserve credit for choosing a destination known as “The Sweetest Place on Earth”, don’t you?

And most importantly:

I have a home cooked meal on the table 6 out of 7 nights of the week.

As a single parent, it would be very simple and somewhat tempting to serve up a frozen pizza, frozen dinner or boxed macaroni meal. How lovely it would be to not have to plan meals for each night and not have to be at a grocery store every 2 days to keep fresh produce stocked in the fridge. It must be nice to not cook and then clean up yourself every single day.

But that is not me.

Just because I got divorced does not mean that meals and cooking were over too. I always made sure to provide him with the same type of family dinner as any other “normal” household. Just because it became only the two of us and most of society seems to think a child can live on chicken fingers, pizza and macaroni,  is no excuse  for me not to cook and certainly no reason for him (or me) to miss out on a good meal.

Such a tragedy in my book to ever miss a good meal. Or good dessert for that matter.

Yes, one day he will appreciate me. He will appreciate me so much one day that he will expect his wife to whip up fresh pancakes for his children not just on Sunday mornings and a home cooked meal (with a vegetable) on the table each night.

And this wife, unless raised the same way I am raising him, will without a doubt hate me.