Leftovers

 Last night, Laura promised to take Mal to the mall today.

She really meant the one in Cedar Park, but he wanted to go to Barton Creek Square, in south Austin. It's a 30 mile drive. I'm writing this just after midnight on a Sunday morning. With no traffic, it's a 34 minute trip. It was fairly close to our old apartment.

She decided that she really didn't have anything better to do with her time and decided to go with our default answer to our kids, which is "Yes."

I wish I could have tagged along. One of my ankles started acting up on Friday morning, and we're doing our best to contain the damage before it gets bad. (Mal really hates all the things I can't do, and I hate telling him that I hate it too).

For part of that damage control, at Laura's suggestion, I broke out my ankle/foot boot thing. Mal insists that I didn't have any trouble standing and carrying him around and rough-housing the last time I needed it, but Laura and I agree that we were in that same south Austin apartment when this was bad.

Then again...it was the podiatrist here who took pity on me and suggested the boot before really advocating for stretches before surgery. Thinking back, it seems like I remember being useless for that move because of the pain.

Either way. Even if he does remember any of that...he was a lot smaller and lighter when it happened.

As much as we tell him that he's getting really big, he doesn't understand that we aren't getting bigger/stronger.

I broke the boot out about 11:45 yesterday morning.

It's heavy and uncomfortable enough that I was ready to just lay down without it by 12:45.

Around 1:15, Laura started pestering Mal about going to the mall.

He sat around watching videos and waiting for the dishwasher to finish before deciding he was ready to go, around 2:45.

That was about the time that I was getting back up.

Around 4:00 pm, Laura sent me a message that we have lots of leftovers in case I got hungry. I asked her whether she expected me to heat food in the microwave like a bachelor. She told me that it'll be totally different, since it isn't restaurant food.

About 5:30, I dug through the fridge.

I thought the inventory was funny enough to share. First there were Mal's staples:

• Mashed potatoes
• White rice
• Plain vanilla icing
• Boiled eggs (from this morning: Laura made some of these and pancakes)
• Mandarin oranges

Then we also had:

• Shredded chicken (which needs to be eaten soon)
• Peas
• Something moldy (I honestly considered putting it back, because the trash is nearly full and I'm not in any shape to take it out...but I managed to make it fit)
• Delicious kale/carrot/bean soup

I had the soup.

After they got home, I had fun listing all the stuff that's Mal's. Laura appreciated the humor but cut to the chase to ask whether I'd found the soup.

Then she proceeded to bake an awesome thing that I can only describe as a pizza casserole.

In case I've never mentioned this before, I have a really awesome wife.