If only fishsticks were sought by MoMA

My children often ask me to draw things for them. “Can you draw me a butterfly? Can you draw me a unicorn? Can you draw me the London Bridge?”

Now, like most people, I have certain…limitations.

One of them is that I am a rotten artist.

I mean, I am bad.

I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. I can’t draw a curved one, either. I can’t even manage ‘random dot’ art, OK?

I am art challenged.

So when you ask me to draw a princess fairy unicorn?

You’re going to get something that looks like Cookie Monster, and I will have no idea why it turned out like that.

This limitation is well-known to my children.

“Honey,” I will say as they rush in clutching markers and construction paper eagerly asking me to draw the Taj Mahal. “Mommy just really isn’t that good at drawing.”

So tonight, I made fishsticks. (Yes. Dinner of champions. Don’t pester me, I’m under a lot of stress right now.) And, as I usually do to hide the fact that this is actually Mommy taking a night off from making, you know, ‘dinner’ dress things up a little, I arranged the fishsticks in festive patterns and drew squiggles and dots and whatnot on the plates.

Boo Bug was delighted, because she has hated everything I’ve made for dinner lately. Roasted garlic pork with twice-baked potatoes? Bleh! Grilled steak with potatoes gratin? YUCK! Sausage in polenta? ACK!!

She swarmed into her chair and regarded her plate happily.

“Mommy!” she exclaimed. “You are an artist! You’re a food artist!”

Hey! You know what?

Yes. Yes I am.

Just, uh, don’t ask me for fairy unicorn princess tater tots, OK?