This is not exactly a traditional tea party spread, I realize. What you’re looking at is all the makings of one of my daughters’ favorite dinners: The BLT with Avocado on whole wheat toast. The girls get to assemble right at the table and it’s almost always good for a giggle: Sandwiches for dinner? Mom, you’re craaazy!
On this particular night, they turned into quartered tea party sandwiches because Andy had plans and wasn’t home for dinner. When Andy is out, I can go one of two ways. I can go Maverick [1] where we barely sit down at the same time let alone eat the same thing. (This is the usual direction I head.) Or I can go Supergirl where we break out one tea cup from my wedding set (for me) and a few tea cups from their Ikea tea set (for them) and I announce that we’re having a juicy-meaty girl talk over our meal. So far, juicy-meaty girl talk amounts to the exact same thing as regular old dinner table talk, but my plan is to start getting them used to telling me those awful Queen-Bee-and-Wannabe friend stories now so they don’t shut me out down the road. I think I already hear mothers of teen-age girls laughing at me. (And this post isn’t even live as I type? how does that work?)
No mother-daughter Life Lessons were imparted over the Niman Ranch Applewood Smoked bacon that night. No therapeutic confessions or burning questions that required the wise counsel from someone who not only made it through second grade, but actually went on to survive middle school (me). Instead, my eldest decided to unload later that night — telling a dramatic story involving a lunchroom bully — while she was lying in bed with the lights out. With Andy.
