Translation needed, please

It is 10:00 a.m. in the Den of Chaos. Nobody has eaten anything yet, because everybody was up too late last night and really, apart from Captain Adventure, we’ve just barely gotten out of bed to survey the damage left from a night of watching a Deadliest Catch marathon and complaining about the Space Formerly Known as Tooth #3. I’m sure my family appreciates that I keep them up to date on each individual sensation in graphic detail every time there’s a commercial break.

Ahem.

Anyway, it suddenly occurs to me, because I am of a maternal bent, that hey – the Denizens haven’t eaten anything since pizza last night (uh, yeah, I was feeling a little too delicate to make dinner last night). So I turned to my offspring and begin the following conversation:

Me: Hey, are you guys hungry?

Eldest: No, not me.

Danger Mouse: Me either. Well. Not very hungry. Maybe a little. Just a little. I mean, not like, I want a thousand bowls of cereal or anything…

Eldest: No, not like that.

Danger Mouse: But maybe A bowl of cereal. Or maybe toast. But I’m not really hungry. Maybe just a little bit.

Eldest: Yeah.

Danger Mouse: Not really. But maybe. I don’t know.

Eldest: Yeah. Not really. So, rock people can’t collect anything but rocks, because they don’t want to collect anything but rocks…

Danger Mouse: But sometimes they want purple seaweed…because sometimes other people don’t think they’re very nice…

Captain Adventure, popping from out of nowhere and jumping up and down in a state of High Excitement: Uhna mayma badda bidda mana! Huuuuuuh? GO GO GO!! Daddy? Out? GO!

OK, so…

Hmm.

See, I know what Captain Adventure wants. It’s the same thing he always wants: to GO. He wants to put on his shoes and hit the open road. He wants some adventure, dammit. You people are boring and I want to GO-GO-GO!!

He giggles all the way out, and starts crying the minute he realizes we’re heading home.

Not much of a home-body, that one.

But the girls? What the heck does this mean? If I make them some breakfast, will they refuse to eat it? Or are they actually starving but too involved in their rock-person game to listen to their yowling stomachs? I know that I am capable of going until 2:00 in the afternoon before it suddenly occurs to me that I ought to eat something, but is this something the ten-and-under set do as well?

Or are they going to wait until we’re on our way to the party this afternoon (a two hour drive) to suddenly let forth shrieks of starvation OH MY GAWD WE’RE DYYYYYYYYYING OF HUNNNNNNGERRRRRRRR!!!!!

Are they going to demand Happy Meals, so they can eat a quarter of the bun from the hamburger and three French fries, slam their drink and then need to go potty while we’re on That stretch of highway, where not only are there no potties, there isn’t even a shoulder to pull over on? Is that their devious plot?

**sigh**

Oh well. I’m just going to quietly put some bowls of cereal on the table and bang on the triangle. And we’ll see what happens.

That’s the true benefit of cereal: If they don’t eat it, I can put it back in the box. You can’t do that with scrambled eggs.

Trust me on that one.