It's a question sure to send chills down every overtired, overextended mom's spine: "Hey, what's for dinner?" Sure, you always knew keeping your family fed was going to be part of the whole adulthood thing, but you never realized that meant figuring out menu options to please a variety of palates (and meet at least a few nutritional requirements) every freaking day for the rest of your God-given life!!!Â
Indeed, between the planning, the shopping, and the cooking (not to mention the cleaning up), sometimes it feels like our entire lives revolve around making dinner — that's why there are about a million torturous things we'd rather deal with instead! Here are just a few …
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Clean Gunk Out of a Clogged Drain
There's nothing quite so uniquely disgusting as pulling gobs of tangled old hair and congealed soap scum out of a stopped-up drain! Still beats the existential disgust you feel making yet another sad, sorry box of macaroni and cheese, though.
Battle Toe Fungus
Ewwww, toenail fungus! It's an unsightly ailment we all do our best to avoid, but at least you can always slap on a pair of socks and forget about it for awhile. Dinner, on the other hand, is an ever-present buzzkill looming overhead, raining on your parade. Just try and pulling the wool over that one on any giving evening around 6pm.
Burn Your Tongue on Hot Coffee
Sure, it's iced coffee season now, but that doesn't mean the threat of scalding hot coffee setting fire to your poor unsuspecting tongue isn't still out there. Getting burned sucks pretty bad, no doubt about it — but it's just a split second of pain compared to the hours-long drama of figure out the next easy and oh-so-creative family dinner!
More from The Stir: Why I Stopped Making Dinner for My Family
Walk on Hot Coals
Here's the difference between walking across fiery hot coals and making dinner: If you do it right, walking across fiery hot coals isn't supposed to hurt at all. Whereas making dinner? Somehow, that's always a painful, seemingly neverending experience, as the kids will complain about the meal no matter what you make.
Change a Stinky Diaper
At some point or another every mother asks herself the same question: How can something so small and so cute create such an unholy mess?! Changing diapers every day is one step away from being a hazmat worker, and yet? Still less of a horror show than trying to hide vegetables in a kid-friendly meal.
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Trim Tiny Baby Fingernails
So tiny! So close to the skin! So nearly impossible to cut without drawing blood! Cutting baby's fingernails is a task better suited to a neurosurgeon than an average mom, if you ask me. But it's still more a more appealing chore than cutting up the ingredients for tonight's dinner!
Clean Coagulated Milk Out of a Bottle
There are few things in the world more stomach-turningly awful than a not-quite-empty baby bottle that's been left sitting at the bottom of a diaper bag … in the middle of summer. Cleaning that vile sludge is one of the least pleasant jobs ever — but making dinner AND then having to clean it up seven minutes later is still much worse.
Check a Kid's Head for Lice
At some point or another, every mom finds herself scrutinizing her kid's head with a magnifying glass, a pit of dread in her stomach, as she hunts for traces of everybody's favorite elementary school pest: Lice. The evil little critters are no fun to have OR get rid of, and looking for them is a nightmare … but at least there's no prep or preheating involved.
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Get a Finger Prick
Why, why, whyyyyyy does a needle prick in the finger hurt SO MUCH more than getting blood taken from a vein in your arm? And then they have the audacity to squeeze your poor pincushion of a fingertip! The nerve (endings)! Then again, a little bloodshed sure beats … you guessed it, cooking dinner.
Unplug a Baby's Stuffy Nose
You know what screaming, stuffed-up infants love? A giant person sticking a bulb syringe in their tiny nose in a fumbling attempt to suck all the boogers out! Nope, just kidding — they hate it. So trying to actually do it sucks. (Hearing those three awful words — "What's for dinner?" sucks even more though!)
Assemble IKEA Furniture
Want to feel like you've been temporarily lobotomized? Try making sense of an IKEA manual. Screw those smug little genderless cartoon people mocking you, making it seem like a two-inch metal rod is all the tool anybody needs to properly assemble a bookcase! But you know what's even worse than this form of Swedish torture? Making dinner.
Clean Out the Fridge
When your refrigerator has essentially turned into a graveyard for take-out Chinese containers and leftover odds and ends that went from "edible" to "petri dish" long ago, cleaning out those cluttered shelves is a hair-raising task. But as long as you don't have to turn any of its contents into dinner, it's okay!
More from The Stir: 5 Best Breakfast Meals You Can Make for Dinner
Plunge a Toilet
Oh boy, raw sewage! There's a reason why plumbers are always in demand: Because fixing plumbing disasters is dirty (not to mention difficult, and even dangerous!) work. Especially when there are kids in the house who use half a roll of toilet paper every time they go! But least when you've got a plunger in your hand, that means you're not holding some sort of cooking utensil.
Get a Flat Tire
Want to throw a perfectly good day way, way off track? Get a flat tire! Cause waiting around on the side of the road for a mechanic to show up (or struggling to change the tire yourself) is just the kind of excitement you need, right? At least while stuck on the side of the road, you have the perfect excuse to dial for takeout.
Wait in Line at the DMV
"Have a seat! We'll be calling your number in approximately 9,472 minutes!" Thanks a lot, DMV — we'll just sit here and sprout grey hairs while you lose our license renewal application. The only good thing about being stuck in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles? It means you can't possibly be cooking dinner!
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