How to Avoid Cooking in One Easy Lesson.

This course has a few prerequisites...they are as follows: Conceive of two gloriously cranky children ranging in ages from 1 year to 3 years old. Try to feed aforementioned gloriously cranky children with no success. Got that taken care of? Good.

Okay, step one: Clean up macaroni from the floor, the highchair, the dogs' back...and all the other places a child can fling it.

step two: with nerves fried, unpleasantly inform the mister that he'd better turn off his beloved cartoon and help you with this maddening affair, pronto!

step three: cranky kids in tow, fill the bathtub with warm water, half a jug of bubble bath and two bare bottomed girls. sit back and try not to get splashed. Turn on shower water and again, sit back and try not to get splashed.

step four: now that the crankies are clean and it's nearing 6pm, load up the car with the soggy but clean gloriously cranky women and head for starbucks. (for the grownups, not the crankies)

step five: drive until the backseat is quiet. most days it'll take about 30 minutes.

step six: unload the unconscious children and deposit them to their beds and leave until morning.

step seven: this is the last and final step...when the mister asks that impending question "what's for dinner honey?" you simply reply, i don't care what we have but i am NOT cooking. (This is usually when any decent husband who's worthwhile will pull out his billfold of take out menus - because seriously, since the advent of direct deposit paychecks and debit cards, who carries cash anymore?) You may have to endure a few minutes of heated debate over which take out is better suited to your current whims, but at least you don't have to cook it yourself.