I’m quite possibly the most twisted food parent to ever enter the dining ring with a minor. In one corner, weighing in at, never mind, hovers a pajama-clad mama, one foot on the refrigerator door for balance, as she lunges in to offer her opponent a twist of fate, straight off her finger. That’s right, folks, not quite the patented baby bird maneuver, but she went in for it, and did she? My God… it looks like she did. The little clean licked that land right off her peninsula is what she did. It sure is. It sure is. A brave little Beer.

I’d been standing in the kitchen, making no attempt to get a plate or close the refrigerator door, no. Scooping out makeshift curls from an individualized dense cheesecake and running them straight to my mouth. But when Abigail walked in, with her eye cocked, and mouth downturned, I was quick to offer her a ribbon of health, right upon my germ-soaked finger. “It’s not dessert,” I said. “They add a lot of sugar and stuff, so you’ll think it’s good for you. But well, I don’t want to say anything. Maybe you’ll like it. Here. Have some. Start with the younger bits that haven’t had time to curdle and cement themselves too much to the organ meats.” Abigail licked the cheese cake I’d been eating. “That’s the goat bag,” I tell her.
She continues to chew, but now looks up. “The wha?”
“Yeah, you know, the innards, the sack, the bag, the layout of the land, inside the goat, it’s like the sack bag, the liner. And the lumpy dumpy sloppy bits slosh around in the goat caboose and churn around to soften and stew in the goat bag. That’s the part you’re eating now. The goat bag. It’s good for you. I told you. They sweeten’ it up for ya.”
“Mama, seriously, you couldn’t just call it cheesecake and let me just enjoy it? Now it’s always going to be goat bag cake. Forever. And ever. Goat bag cake.”
“Would it have been better if I’d said it was a lamb sack, cause I totally thought about it, but we’re eating lamb balls tomorrow night in our lemon soup, and I didn’t want to miff you.
“You’re one sick pup. You know that mum, don’t ya?”
“Doin’ me job well, then, son, now that I’ve got ya talking to me as if you live somewhere far away, somewhere, where there’s pubs and people eat rabbits, how ’bout we leave the kitchen work to the he’s of the house, and go get our girl on something proper Winn Dixie?”
“Like, you want to paint my nails or clean my ears?”

She returns only with q-tips, the direct route to my heart.

For readers who’ve missed it, this was my sick way of hoping to hoard all the cheesecake for myself. To convince an 8 year old that it was pretty much poached goat intestines. My girl, however, is MY child. “Not fallin for it. And if it is, who cares?”