If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.

Both of my parents enjoy cooking, and aside from my mother's ill-advised attempt to make bagels, both are very good at it. I am not a good cook, proving that the apple does indeed sometimes fall far, far from the tree and then when you try to make apple pie with that apple, it tastes like evil. My parents shared the cooking duties when I was growing up, and thank goodness for that because NOT ONLY did we get my mom's to-die-for homemade brownies, but on Sunday mornings we got huge breakfasts centered around my dad's omelets, MADE TO ORDER for each person because I was a little bitch who only wanted cheese. No ham, no mushrooms, no peppers, just cheese. I have since expanded my omelet horizons.

My dad isn't afraid to experiment in the kitchen, with varying degrees of success. Expanding on a chili recipe? Good. Trying to make his own Hamburger Helper recipe by mixing tuna and Kraft mac & cheese? Bad. So very bad. And yet, I think he was prouder of the tuna mac & cheese abomination than of any of his other creations.

Where my dad really excelled in the kitchen, at least in my six-year-old eyes, was packing our school lunches. I'd open my pink Barbie lunchbox (shut up) each day to find my sandwich, undoubtedly PB&J, not cut in half or diagonally, oh no, but in a variety of shapes. Dad was never one to simply cut a sandwich in half when he could cut it like this:



or this:



or ESPECIALLY this:



Being a kid is hard, no? School, even elementary school with its monkey bars and kickball and Field Day, is no picnic. Even on Class Picnic Day, on account of all the bees. And if I do ever end up popping out a tiny baby, by the time it reaches kindergarten I hope I still remember how good it felt to open my lunchbox every day and find evidence that my dad loved me. Even though back then, I just thought he had a lot of extra time on his hands.