Scene:  Kitchen.  Momsie is humming, mixing up some eggs and sugar for cookies.  Chocolate chip cookies.  Also known as Toddler Smack.

The boys are assembling what looks like a nuclear power plant with Legos.  Occasionally the cat throws in a protest (He’s anti-nuclear. Or maybe anti-Lego.) by racing through and waving small signs.  The wee engineers are not deterred and a model of Three Mile Island is slowly forming in my living room.

Their conversation sounds like this:

Blonde: Dear brother, could you pass me yonder grey Lego?

Red:  Why of course, I would be honored.

Blonde: Thank you.  This will complete Zone three on the reactor.  It’s da Red Zone.

Red:  Lovely weather we’re having today, wouldn’t you agree?

Blonde:  Oh yes!  Later I think we should go outside for healthy sunshine and fresh air, don’t you think?
My cherubs.

I smile  and start to measure out the chocolate chips, blessed by the peaceful day and the wonderment that is parenting.  But then, I hear it.  My inner nutball:

“WHAT are you doing?  Are you INSANE?  You are making them COOKIES!  WITH SUGAR.  And where’s the carob chips?  This is gross negligence!”  I look around guiltily. Inner nutball whispers in horror:  “The sugar… It’s WHITE.”

“HOW COULD YOU?”

“I mean, look at my those babies:”

 

 

 

 

“HOW DARE YOU EXPOSE THEM TO COOKIES?????

‘

 

 

 

Fear not, neurotic one, there is a solution to all this malaise.  It’s this stuff:

 

Just toss some of this into your cookie batter and voila!  You are no longer serving your darlings small pastries of doom!  It’s that simple.

I add this magic powder to:

pancakes, cookies, cakes, smoothies, oatmeal, vodka tonics (JUST KIDDING)

I also: 

Wave it over my tater tots when I begin to feel the guilt curtain descend.

Set it in front of the television while they watch yet another episode of Barney.

Position it strategically over their beds at night, amending any snappish comments I might have uttered earlier that day.

It also works in marriages!

Try it in your coffee the morning after a particularly violent episode with a snoring husband.  It erases all possibility that you might have tried feeding him a pillow.

Just hand him the entire container when you make him watch The Sound of Music with you. Again.

Sprinkle it on the bedsheets!  You fall asleep every night at 8 pm due to exhaustion?  No guilt.  Wheat germ it.
Put a container in your kitchen, your clothes closets, the litter boxes!

Set some as a paper weight in office to fend off ennui as you write and ignore your children!

Get a travel size for the car!

Take it on vacation!

Mail a case of the stuff to Pinterest!
But, don’t even try to take it to your mother’s.  It won’t work there.
(Just kidding, Mom.)

Now I feel guilty.