If the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy.

Mary has mentioned how much she loves lasagna a couple of times this summer. So, I made a vegetable lasagna the other day. I added eggplant, zucchini, red pepper and mushrooms to the sauce and cooked spinach to the ricotta. And after weeks of great dinner behavior, Food Battle 2009 suddenly reared its ugly head.

We had been planning to go out for ice cream and a trip to the park after dinner. But if you want ice cream, you've got to eat dinner. And Mary wouldn't. First, she ate all the cheese off the top of her piece. She picked out all the noodles and ate those. Then, she stopped eating. And started stirring the remaining vegetables and ricotta around in the bowl while singing to herself about how gross it was. For an hour.

So, we canceled ice cream and the park. And she lost it. She was sent to her bed where she proceeded to literally wail about how unfair it all was. I have a video of her door through which you can hear the ridiculousness of it (and me snickering in the background). It's hilarious; you'd think we had just amputated some of her fingers without anesthestic. I was going to post it here.

But then, this morning, I backed into the garage door. And I completely lost it. I stormed into the house and threw my coffee cup into the sink. I went back outside to look at it and started screaming about how "We can't afford this. We can't even afford to drive the car, let alone wreck it." I slammed some doors. I slammed a couple of them multiple times. Then, I sat down and cried. Wailed, really.

The door is, um, completely screwed up. And there's a huge dent in the back of the car. And we can't afford an accident like this right now. Or ever. It sucks. The one bright spot is that there is no video of me freaking out about it.

Obviously, I won't be posting the video of Mary's bedroom door. Here's one of Thomas instead.

Will Talk for Food ... Sort Of from Leslie Ann McNolty on Vimeo.