This is just to prove that Sue is a normal woman still, as she so much loves to remind us in the second movie. She's a normal woman, and this was so tempting to write.

Why My Husband Is Useless At Mealtimes

Usually, at dinner time, it's chaos in the kitchen. The kids are bouncing around every available space in the room, asking constantly 'is it ready yet?' until part of me wants to just throw it away and cancel dinner that night. The dog is usually wagging his tail and bashing every available kitchen cupboard or child's leg with it, because he thinks their jumping is a game that he can join in on. I'm cooking, struggling to make sure that dinner is equally ready on time, so that Valeria doesn't whine that Franklin's is ready first and that she has to wait a gruelling extra fifteen seconds for hers to be served up.

But the real dinner time frustration comes about ten minutes before everything's finished, when all that needs to be done is pasta or peas to be strained, and for things to be dished up onto the plates. That's the time where hope starts to surface, in the gap between things getting finished, and the kids starting to feign deadly starvation on the kitchen floor. I start to see a light at the end of the tunnel, which in my life means that I realise I'll get to sit down and read my book in peace even though I have to wash up as well.

It's also the time where my husband surfaces.

Ok, so Reed's not the most observant man in the world, but I didn't think he was completely blind. He'll spend his time after working in the lab nowadays unwinding in front of the television, even though the kids are in full reign of the channels, so he usually ends up unwinding in front the children's programmes. Then, when he realises that the smell of food is more tempting than what's on television; and the even bigger give away, that the child who chose the programme isn't even in the room; he'll wander on down to the kitchen, where I'm struggling to cook while working my way around two kids with too much energy, and a dog with a far too energetic tail.

But it's not the fact that he's come to add to my cooking audience that drives me insane, it's how he participates. He'll take one look in the kitchen, see Franklin jumping on the spot, watching with keen interest while I serve up the dinners, and Valeria, not quite as tall as her brother but trying to jump just as high as him, and that's not forgetting Alfie, our hyperactive Beagle, thumping his tail so hard against the kitchen cabinet that it's a wonder it's not either hurting him or denting the cupboard. He'll look at it all, take a breathe, and ask me the question that makes me want to bang him over the head with a saucepan and dish up his remains for Alfie's dinner.

"Anything I can help with, dear?"

Anything he can help with?

He's kidding, right?

For the duration of my time in the kitchen, usually around an hour, he's been trying to get caught up with what he missed during the episode of 'Transformers' that Franklin had watched before school, which he'd missed because, damn shame, he had research to do for a lecture he would be giving the following day. Honestly, universities just didn't think about the importance of children's television programmes.

Whilst Reed would have been more involved in the fiction characters than the children either side of him on the couch, I had figured out what we were having for dinner, cooked it, waited for it to cook whilst I'd done the ironing, and then made sure that Reed was keeping an eye on the dinner whilst I walked Alfie to the park at the end of the road to do his business. To no surprise, Reed hadn't moved a single inch when I'd come back. I don't even think he'd have noticed I'd gone at all if I hadn't stood in front of the television to make sure that he was aware that the oven was on. Then, when I went back into the kitchen, telling everyone that dinner would be about quarter of an hour, the kids would follow.

Because, you know, kids have no time perception when it comes to mealtimes. "Fifteen minutes" meant that it was being dished up soon, and there was the nagging thought that if they stood there and watched my every move, it would make it go faster, and they could eat sooner. Honestly, if a stranger came into our house and saw this happening, they'd think the children hadn't been fed since the same time yesterday.

They had been. I should probably point that out.

So, after I've cooked, cleaned, and walked the dog in the space of an hour, all whilst clinging to my sanity, Reed has the courage, the undeniably brave male guts, to pop his head into the kitchen and see if I needed any help.

An hour ago, I'd have needed help, when Franklin and Valeria couldn't settle on same meal that they wanted. Valeria wanted Fish Fingers. Franklin wanted Chicken Dippers. There was no compromise there. Not until we decided to go with potato wedges.

Twenty minutes ago, I'd have needed help, when Alfie whined his way into the kitchen, nudging my legs until I agreed to leave the cooking to one side so that his needs could come before the hunger of the rest of the family. Why couldn't dogs be woman's best friend instead? Surely then they'd understand that walks had to fit in around the housework, not the other way around.

Five minutes ago, when the children were jumping up and down like they'd overdosed on E numbers the second they'd left the school gates, I'd have needed help.

But after all that, when I was managing to coax the kids to sit up at the table and wait patiently, and more importantly for my nagging headache, quietly, for their dinners, when all that needed doing was to put the food on the plates and walk a very short distance to the table where it would no doubt be devoured in one eighth of the time it had taken me to prepare it, that's when Reed offered his services.

"Anything I can help with, dear?"

Yes, darling. Pass me the wine.

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