Bacon Tickles

My husband Dave wanted eggs for breakfast this morning, along with breakfast meat, and he wanted pancakes.
I was stubbornly trying to hang on to sleep in my daughter's lower bunk. She woke up early and got online in my bedroom and talked to her twenty-two Webkinz for half an hour before I decided I didn’t want to eavesdrop any more. I went in her room, carefully avoiding the Barbie Army in formation in the center of the room, and tried to go back to sleep.
Meanwhile, Dave did the math- two eggs plus zero processed meat minus me equals no hot breakfast.
To add to the algebra, I have clean laundry on the table. With the washer and dryer in the kitchen, the table is for meals and folding, but not both at once. No math needed there!
I mumbled that we actually do have pancake mix, but Dave was already too far gone. He quietly told Samma we were going to IHOP! She actually hopped off the computer and ran to tell me.
Half asleep, I heard those letters and yelled to him—“are you just trying to get me up to make you breakfast or are we really going?”
“I just gotta comb my hair and brush my teeth.”
It takes my husband longer to get ready than the typical teenage girl. He has to smoke four or five cigarettes and watch a dumb movie, maybe take a nap… so when he says he’s gotta get ready, I am ready to wait, and I expect to wait until the next meal. I was thinking lunch, and dozing off again.
It wasn’t long, actually, before I heard keys.
I am positive the fashion police don’t frequent IHOP, at least not on a Sunday morning, so I rolled carefully out of Samma’s bed, stepped around the Barbie Army and got dressed in the dining room. And we were off.
I went with a dessert based on pancakes. It had butterscotch and nuts and whipped cream just like a sundae. I had to fuel my planned trip to the workout room, after all.
Dave had his eggs and pancakes and a carnivore treasure hunt! The bacon and sausage were on the sides of the plate but Canadian bacon was hiding under the pancakes. He was delighted to find it. The more meat the better! I don’t know what he had to fuel with all that food- a small jet plane?
Samma had eggs and pancakes but for some reason she wanted her father’s bacon! He gave her half a piece. It wasn’t enough. When the server came by, Samma ordered herself a side of bacon. Dave and I looked at each other and smiled. She rarely eats meat, sometimes even saying she is a vegetarian like me. I say she is a part-time vegetarian, and that is fine.
But the bacon was too much. Soon I had bacon marching up my left arm while I was trying to eat.
“Mom, have my bacon.”
“Mom, the bacon wants to hop into your mouth.”
I guess she is a rapid cycling part-time vegetarian. It goes minute by minute.