Making lunches for the next day: my daughter’s, then my own. My daughter’s is simple: peanut butter and honey, carrot sticks, CapriSun, GoGurt, cheddar cheese sandwich crackers. Oh yeah, throw some candy for dessert in, too. Pack it all up in the Barbie cooler.

Start on mine. Bologna and cheese on wheat, very original. Retrieve from the fridge: mayonnaise, dijon mustard, bread. Pause, then queue up some Journey on the computer. The kitchen is apparently in need of rock ballads tonight.

Highway run
Into the midnight sun
Wheels go ’round and ’round
You’re on my mind

Sandwich comes together. Set it aside, back to the fridge. Carrots, celery… celery is droopy, good thing it’s the last of it.

Any way you want it
That’s the way you need it
Any way you want it

Oddly appropriate music to chop veggies to. Careful of the fingers, the carrot is rolling a bit. Now, cottage cheese or yogurt?

Streetlights, people
Living just to find emotion
Hiding somewhere in the night

Cottage cheese. It’s the big container, Costco-sized but not from Costco. Scoop some into the tupperware-that-isn’t-tupperware plastic bowl, snap a lid on it. Pack it all up into my lunch cooler (soft-walled), then grab an orange while Steve Perry tells me to Don’t stop believin’.

Lunch is ready.