Mealtime.

It's stupid the things you worry about when your parents visit. My mom will be arriving (again) next week to help us out with Ragsy while I'm in labor and afterward. We decided that she might as well stay until Thanksgiving, which is going to be a ridiculously long visit.

What's strange is that the part of the visit that bothers me most is mealtimes. Actually, maybe that's not so strange given how much mental energy my mom expends on cooking, and therefore requires me to spend on cooking. My mom was brought up in a household where kids ate early, went to bed, then adults ate a full dinner afterward. She brought us up the same way until we were in high school, when we all ate in separate rooms in front of our separate televisions. I'm sure it's obvious we didn't really bond as a family until we were well away from each other.

Every single time she visits, mealtime for adults occurs no earlier than 8:30, but usually around 9. This annoys me immensely and I never realize how important that time is to me until she's here and I don't get it anymore. It's not necessarily because I'm starving before then (though I often am), but because a) I think that mealtime is an important time to connect with your family and b) I hate having to fiddle with two mealtimes. It's inconvenient because it's a lot of work and forces you to stay up later than you might have otherwise. And c) I loathe going to bed on a full stomach. If I eat that late, I wake up still feeling full, which is code for slightly nauseated because I'm not supposed to have food still in my stomach by the time I wake up. Oh, and it doesn't help that Ragsy still wakes up at 6:30 to announce to us that it's daytime (no, really, it's not daytime at 6:30 anymore, but potato, po-tah-to).

Oh, well. Since having Ragsy, I've become a definite creature of habit. Having my routine thrown off for a prolonged period irritates me, so in a way I've become as reliant on our evening routine as our son has. Weird. Now I throw tantrums, too, when my routine is messed up.