Day 65. 115,650 words.

We met up with a few more old friends today, and I took an afternoon train ride into Perth to do some random shopping for birthday presents and things.

There really wasn’t much to add for today.

Oh, our evening meal (after the great success of the Indian restaurant adventure on Day 6) was butter chicken, since my mum decided it was the only food Wump and Toop ate. You know, because they ate it that one time and my parents are very worried that our kids are going to die of malnutrition.

Anyway, it didn’t go as my mum planned (I know, I was also surprised!). Mainly because she put more spice than butter chicken generally has (ie. an actual measurable quantity of any sort of spice), so Wump and Toop weren’t into it. Also because she put the bowls of rice in front of the girls before trying to put sauce on, which … I don’t even know how you make that mistake. Of course they’re going to go “yay, plain rice with nothing on!” and start to eat it and then be resistant to any attempts to sully the purity of their meals with any kind of actual nutritious content. You mix the sauce in before they see it’s theoretically an optional extra. Goodness’ sake.

My dad decided to try to nourish the poor starving things by any means necessary (and for “necessary”, read “wait, what the fuck, seriously?”), and added a bunch of milk to their rice while they were complaining about not wanting sauce and I was telling them they were indeed having sauce.

There’s a lot to unpack here but I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that we have taught Wump and Toop that they need to at least try food before they say they don’t want it. Wrong lesson in the case of this oxymoronically spicy butter chicken, but I managed to drain out the milk (much to Wump’s and Toop’s sorrow, since they’re also usually the ones to idiotically pour drinks into food or dessert into meal or candy into gravy) and get them to try the actual food. This whole thing was even more of a mystery because I know my parents know how to actually feed children. I can only assume there’s some sort of fuse that blows when you become a grandparent.

I left it to my dear wise older brother to advise our dad, “You had your chance to parent, and it was us three-” [pointing to indicate me, himself and my absent sister] “-and you fucked it up. Don’t double-down on the next generation.”

That’s how the Hindles roll.