Chương 881: Day Eight Hundred And Seventy-Nine

Dear Diary, My life here and now is so weird sometimes. I'm not even talking about how I can functionally fast travel to anyplace I've been that I remember, or Being A Deity, or even the mundane everyday weirdness of being a mom, although all of those enter into it. The weirdness mostly hits me after a string of days like the last few. I had another part of a conversation with my daughter about sex. I stood watch atop the mast of a reactivated heavily modified World War Two Iowa Class Battleship.

I inadvertently flirted with a cephalopod. I had Bath based fun time with my collared paramour, which wound up inadvertently touching off the sex talk with my daughter when she saw it, then walked in on my own parents doing something that straddled the invisible line between torture and really kinky sex. I had multiple conversations with my brother, who is a snake and also petrified.

I worked with my wife and my adopted serial killer son to prep what I needed to deal with Poser Poseidon, who happens to be sending fuckin' waves of kaiju to destroy the nation I founded in my adopted home. Like, what the actual fuck. Am I living my best life as a wife and mother, or am I trying out for a spot in the next Avengers line up. Make it make sense, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

I'm the one who has the most influence on whether it makes sense, and that means I'm carving as much time out to spend with my ladies and my kids as I can. So yesterday after leaving Dad's place laughing, then dropping Mom's boots and stuff off at Conrad's, I headed home to find the kids had attempted to make fried mashed potatoes. I'm not sure exactly what they intended, but it did not come out good. I mean, the flavor wasn't bad. The crispiness of the fried potato was pretty good, really.

But instead of actual chunks of mashed tater with crispy outsides, they wound up making a kind of 'oops, all crispy' made of nothing but crispy crumbly bits. They'd also flash fried a bunch of vegetables. It turns out Marie wound up focused on feeding D and let Siobhan supervise the kitchen. Which, let's be clear, nobody got hurt. She made sure they fried shit safely, which is a heck of an accomplishment for fifteen kids. with one supervisor.

So Marie and I spent some time crumbling up the crispy potato bits, using them kinda like bread crumbs to coat some chicken tenders we cut up, and deep fried those. Not the greatest tendies ever made, but completely edible. Ria looked at me while we all clustered around the dining room table eating and asked, "why didn't you throw it away?" I kinda froze. Didn't know quite how to explain. But I realized both why she'd been the one to ask and why it was important for the kids to understand.

I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and said, "okay, how many of you have gone to bed hungry before." Most of the hands shot up.

"I mean how many have gone to bed without eating anything that day." Everybody except Marie's original five girl horde hoard lowered their hands. I nodded. I kept my hand in the air, and I noticed Saffron and Marie both had theirs up too.

"We've all tried to make sure that none of you ever go to bed hungry. That you've always got food to eat. Maybe not always your favorite, maybe sometimes something you don't like very much, but still something that will fill your belly and keep you healthy." I looked to those five.

"You guys have eaten well since we've been doing that, right?" They all nodded, and put their hands down when I did.

"Now, I'm not trying to make any of you feel guilty, or any other kind of way. Just pointing out that not everybody in the world has enough to eat all the time. Saffron, Marie, and I all have gone to bed hungry when there just wasn't any food. So we all feel some kinda way about wasting food that can still be eaten." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"But it was ruined?" I nodded to Ria, then rocked my head back and forth.

"It didn't turn out the way you wanted, but it wasn't inedible, was it?" She shook her head.

"Okay, so eating nothing but potato crunch might not be the best nutrition, and probably would have left you feeling a little sick because of all the oil. But we managed to make something good out of it, right?" She pursed her lips, but nodded.

"There's still some left though."

"Yeah, and Marie and I will put it away, see if we can't use it for something later. Because," I realized something right then, and stifled a sigh.

"You girls all realize we're kinda rich, right?" So funny, seeing Isnomi shrug, like she knew that but it wasn't important, watching Ria get a kind of booger look, like it was a faux pas to say it, holding my laughter in as the other five older girls glance at Ria, then back to me like 'duh', and watching all eight kits eyes get real big. Not in any kind of avaricious way, but just like they hadn't really realized.

"So why do we need to be frugal?" Ria's question twisted every head around to look at her. Okay, everybody except her and Tallulah, who were looking at me. I thought for a second.

"Mostly? Aside from three of us really feeling some kinda way about wasted food? Because not everybody is. Because every bit of food we waste is food that could have gone to somebody else who isn't. Because being rich like we are is comes with responsibility to use that wealth wisely, whether that's not wasting food or helping people who need it." I paused a second, then nodded at Ria.

"That doesn't mean you have to force yourself to eat things you hate, or eat food that's so badly ruined that it's no longer edible. But it does mean that if you can salvage things? You salvage them. If you have something useful that you don't need any more, you don't destroy it, you see if someone else needs it, wants it, and if nobody does then you clean it up and store it away for when somebody does."

"Even old things?" I couldn't tell if Maze was curious or feeding me lines, but I figured I'd swing at the pitch. I nodded.

"Even then. Not broken things, not things that nobody would want, but if you grow out of your clothes and they're still good, you see if someone else wants them. Maybe somebody else will really like them. Maybe they can use the fabric to make something new. Maybe they'll use it to stuff a pillow. The important thing is that you don't waste stuff just to waste stuff. Clothes, food, even toys and tools." I looked around.

"Got it?" They all nodded back.

"Got it!'" When we all got up to the Bath, Saffron slid the ladies around me, and once the children were distracted thought, Siobhan, you'll be sharing tonight. I thought as much. Yeah, apparently Saffron and Marie share that whole, 'domestic mom Tabitha tracks, and needs trains run on her' thing going on. On the one hand, sad that I heard and saw almost none of it, courtesy of someone suspiciously Siobhan shaped covering everything above my head with everything below her waist. On the other hand... Not.

Complaining. Co-Located out to watch the Tentacles, because there was definitely some high proof Imperator grade Wife Worship going on there. Saw next to nothing all day. Okay, I saw something, but I didn't recognize it until late in the day when, as I stood in the crow's nest atop the main mast of the Seeking with Saffron in my arms, she tensed.

"What do you see?" She shook her head.

"Not so much what I see, love. What I've been looking at and just realized." I followed her pointing finger, only to see weird clouds kinda piling up, headed in from the ocean. Atop the Black Dragon I noticed the same thing.

"What am I looking at?"

"The winds are normally from the south and west this time of year."

"You mean?" She nodded.

"They're almost here." I just stared at the line of clouds all along both horizons I could see. Pulled out the binocs aboard the Black Dragon and saw shadowy silhouettes projected onto the clouds from just past the horizon.

"Shit."