Breakfast Time with a Side of Kitchen Fires
The alarm buzzed and with it came the sound of screaming. Nicole Watterson was so used to waking up this way that she could picture the situation in her head without even having to go look. Right now her husband had probably set half the kitchen on fire in an attempt to cook breakfast. Fighting off sleep, she sprung out of bed and rushed down to the kitchen. Her suspicions were confirmed as she saw the kids cornered to one side of the dining room while Richard was attempting to bang the fire extinguisher against the flames.
"Richard you know that's not how we use the fire extinguisher!" Nicole yelled as she yanked it from him.
"It says to use a fire extinguisher to fight the flames & that's what I'm trying to do!" He yelled as he ducked out of her way. "You gotta show the fire who's boss with hand-to-hand combat!" Nicole used the extinguisher to spray down the stove and stared at the mess of foam and burnt pancakes.
"Richard, you'd think for how much you eat you would know how to use the stove," Nicole said while scraping the burnt pancakes into the trash.
"Well that's why we have you around," Richard said cheerfully. "You're the best one to do the cooking, take care of bills, make sure I don't get my head stuck in the toilet."
"Richard there's only so many times I can help you get your head unstuck from the toilet before it gets old." Nicole said as she fixed fresh pancakes for the kids.
As everyone ate breakfast and discussed their plans for the day, Nicole was lost in thought. 'I can't believe he's still like this,' Nicole thought as everyone was eating. 'We've been married for what, 20 years now, and he's still just as irresponsible as when we first met? Is this what's it's going to be like? Being stuck cleaning someone else's mess?' Nicole thought back to the previous years, before the kids were born, before they were really even dating, Richard had always been this bumbling oaf of a rabbit. There was that one time in grade school when Richard got his tongue stuck to the flag pole because the older kids told him that it tasted like licorice. There was one date where the two of them went up to Make-Out Cliff and Richard didn't know how the brake pedal worked and they were hurtling in reverse and crashed against another tree. Every situation with him just ended in pure chaos, one way or the next. Nicole looked across to the table to notice that he was doing his classic "see food" trick with Anais.
"See? Food!" Richard giggled as bits of pancake dropped from his mouth.
"Ewww, Dad don't be gross!" Anais said as she quickly moved her food out of the way of the pancake drippings.
'And that's another thing,' Nicole realized. 'It really feels like I'm taking care of four kids instead of three.'
As the kids left for the school bus, Nicole gathered her stuff for work.
"Richard can you clean up the table?" Nicole asked. As she heard a clattering behind her, she turned to notice that Richard had gathered the plates in the tablecloth and dumped it into the trash can.
"Richard that's not what I-" Nicole started to say before realizing there was no point. "Never mind." She quickly hugged him and looked at his face. She looked into those big baby eyes that still had a child-like twinkle despite both of them creeping onto 40. 'There has to be something,' she thought.
"I love you sweetie." Nicole said.
"And I love you…." Richard blanked on her name.
"Nicole."
"That's right, Natasha!" Richard said confidently.
"Close enough," Nicole sighed. "Just try not to burn the house down."
"Oh honey," Richard kissed her cheek. "There's no promises."