The McDonald's Season

The Dictator prepares to head
to her dance recitals.  Guess
where we ate between shows?

Confession.  This is something that has filled me with gnawing shame and guilt for quite some time.  As a mother who spent the first couple of years of her first child's life plying her with organic foods, shunning additives and avoiding sugar like a trooper, I can't believe how far I've turned to the dark side.  But necessity is the mother of obesity, and necessity has led me--repeatedly--straight into the arms/drive-thru of the Golden Arches.

Yes.  I'm aware that their food has a history of containing unfoodlike substances.  Yes.  I know they serve Coke products, which we have fondly labeled "the blood of the innocents" for Coke's consistent record of violently suppressing union activity in Central America (think: hired assassins).  Yes.  I know that McDonald's contributes to childhood obesity.  But guess what?  They have a drive-thru, "food" my children are willing to consume, and the added bonus that I won't be tempted to eat anything unhealthy, as I don't consider most of their menu items "food" per se (although I may or may not have a weakness for Wildberry smoothies and french fries).

The fact of the matter is that most of the year, my family eats home cooked meals with fresh vegetables and fruits, organic milk (and lots and lots of cheese, but we won't discuss that right now).  I can pride myself on at least being a semi-competent mom in the "nourishing" category.

But now we have entered into what I am officially calling "McDonald's Season."  This season is marked by an increase in busy-ness: piano rehearsals/recitals, dance pictures/rehearsals/recitals, birthday parties, random social events in which no one in Michigan would even dream of participating during the winter months, etc.  It is also marked by a clown-shaped blight on my parenting skills.

My McWeakness

I know McDonald's Season is upon us when I look up from turning down the volume of NPR's in-depth discussion on locavores, chemical food additives, and food justice on the car's radio and realize that I am, in fact, gazing at the drive-thru menu of McDonald's with my window rolled down and the Anarchist and the Dictator shouting "Chicken nuggets!  Chocolate milk, chocolate milk!  French Fries!  I want a GIRL toy!  Hamburger...no, cheeseburger!" at me from the backseat.  How did I get here?  What happened to my elitist hatred of corporate America and all the oppression it stands for?  Where is my refined sense of culinary taste hiding?  And why do I suddenly have a craving for a Large French Fry and Chocolate Milkshake?

Too late to back out now.  I have places to be, limited time, and hungry little mouths to feed with something that they insist upon calling "food."  I politely thank the teenager at the window, bust open plastic bags of plastic marketing ploys...I mean...toys, wipe off pickles and onions, adeptly split french fries (to be strategically withheld until apple-like wedges are consumed), dislocate my arm in an effort not to spill chocolate milk while I blindly pass it to groping hands in the seat behind me, and plunge face first into a pile of french fries.