“The Hangry Mom and the Kitchen Sink”

Here’s another modern cautionary tale for you:

Once there was a beloved but tired, neglected, and overworked mother who had gone through a record 75% of her family To-Do List by dinnertime (no mean feat), only to discover that her teenaged daughters had not only NOT started dinner nor washed dishes, but that they had a brand-new To-Do List with her name on it, all to be desperately completed by bedtime, if not sooner. 

That evening, upon arriving home after chauffeur duties at, say, 6:45pm, and discovering this state of affairs, their beloved mother, hungry from a day of running on low fuel, exploded into a fit of transformation, whereupon she became “The Hangry Mom”, a horned, fanged creature whose soothsaying knew no bounds, who paced up and around the kitchen in an angered frenzy of cleaning and quick dinner preps, pointedly dressing her daughters up and down in fatigue and disbelief that, after such a day of running, she still had to run some more! 

Within 18 minutes of her frightening transformation, the kitchen was clean, dinner was ready, and the kids were bustling about humbly and warily dumping trash and dusting pianos. At this, the Hangry Mom retreated grumpily and wearily upstairs to her patchouli-scented bubble bath, in hopes of reverting back to her normal state of efficient loveliness, blackberry tea in hand. 

Moral of the story: If Mom is coming home after a hard day’s work and you’ve been there at least half the day, start dinner before she arrives or face a Hangry Mom. Everyone will be happier.