Murphy’s Law of Having Dinner Early

My life used to be full of Murphy’s Laws. There were laws about explosive diaper incidents, sick children, vomiting, etc. Having young children meant my life was pretty much one law after another. But now that I no longer have teeny tinies at home, Murphy is no longer a daily presence in our home. And it has been nice. But Murphy must have been looking for a way to weasel back into our house because I discovered a new law today.

Our middle school holds concerts and other evening events at 6:00 instead of 7:00 like most other places. As with all things, there are pros and cons to this. One of the cons it that we have to eat dinner early because for little tummies and big migraines, waiting to have dinner after the concert is just too late. Daniel’s call time has usually been 5:45, so this really hasn’t been a huge deal. We usually eat around 5:30, so we generally only need to push dinner a little bit earlier. However, Nathan had his first choir concert tonight and his call time was 5:15 which meant I needed to have dinner ready by 4:30 so he could eat before he left (like me, he is prone to headaches when he doesn’t eat). Unfortunately, that is when Murphy made an appearance.

Murphy’s Law of Having Dinner Early states that when you have plans to eat dinner early, something catastrophic will inevitably prevent the early consumption of food. For example, just after you get the food in the pan and turn the stove on, you might cause a Corelle plate (and it has to be Corelle because glass or ceramic just doesn’t have the same explosive effect) to fall out of the cupboard in just the right way that it falls perpendicular to a similar plate sitting on the counter. When the very edge of the falling plate hits the center of the plate on the counter it will inevitably shatter. And because it is Corelle, it will send tiny shards of glass all over the kitchen covering the stove, the food that is cooking, the counters, the floor, under the fridge, and even send a few chunks onto the carpet in the living room. At that point, you would have to turn off the stove and throw out the food which is covered in microscopic bits of glass, clean out the stove, move everything off the surrounding counters so you can wipe up the glass, sweep the floor, shake off the kitchen rug, wipe all the counters and floors with a wet paper towel to pick up all the shards you can’t see, and vacuum the carpet as well. All of that would take about 40 minutes making an early dinner an impossibility.

Needless to say, poor Nathan did not get to eat dinner before his concert. Luckily, the concert was only half an hour so his dinner was not too late.

And Malia cried because I broke one of the “nice” plates.

Darn Murphy.