Things Done Changed

When Wood was staying home with Juniper, I would usually arrive home from work in time for her dinner. At that time, dinner involved a strenuous effort to convince Juniper to open her mouth for the various hashes and succotashes we prepared for her with tofu, eggs, kale, peas, cheese, black beans, garbanzos, hot dogs, ketchup and other ingredients in combinations that under ordinary circumstances no adult human would ever consume. But after going through the effort to cook it on the stove (we didn't have a microwave in San Francisco) Wood inevitably felt compelled to eat some of the scorned leftovers on Juniper's high-chair tray. I always found this absolutely disgusting, and never failed to let my wife know it.

Two days ago I was walking around with Juniper on my back in one of those emasculating backpack carriers and I stopped at an Indian restaurant downtown to grab some takeout from their lunch buffet, and while I was filling the to-go container to maximum capacity, Juniper dropped a chunk of the brownie that she had been gnawing on for at least ten minutes. It bounced off my shoulder right into a steaming vat of mutter paneer. By reflex I snatched it up with the tongs and dropped it in my palm. There was no trash nearby, and the proprietor's back was turned, so I popped the drooly and gnawed-up brownie chunk covered in dripping pea-and-cheese curry sauce right into my mouth.

I didn't think much about it until we went to bed last night and I told Wood what happened. She laughed and said, "What the fuck's wrong with you? That's absolutely disgusting." I nodded, but was thinking to myself that it didn't actually taste that bad.