Workin' Progress: PB & Eric

Eric Anderson had been working the PB&J diet long before those three horrible little people arrived.  After he bought his house in Lynn in 94, he had spent many, many days with no food in the house other than a couple of loaves of white bread, the bucket of gritty peanut butter, and the biggest jar of store-brand grape jelly.  He didn't have a house full of furniture at that time either, but he was fine with that, so when it came time to feed the kids, he was more than used to it.  He cooked dinner, but he didn't eat it.  The crock pot rarely served up any leftovers, but Eric didn't want to get into the habit regardless.  The children understood that the two loaves store-brand white bread, the shitty peanut butter, the jelly, the gallon jug of cheap orange juice, and the 3-liter bottle of generic diet cola was his, and if they pretended that they didn't understand or if they forgot, he would certainly let them know it.  And did.  They ate cereal in the morning, every morning before school.  Each of them ate the same cereal each day, and Eric had stopped hearing their breakfast complaints long ago.  For lunch, it was the hot lunch.  Whatever slop the school was flinging that day, they ate it or they went hungry.  For a snack, it was some kind of fresh fruit, usually apples, bananas, or clementines.  The fresh fruit was another thing Eric didn't eat.  He bought just enough for a weeks' school snacks and didn't increase the fruit budget by 33% by adding himself to the list.  They never brought barely-eaten fruit home; the very few times Johnny had done it, Eric unloaded an expletive-filled, red-faced tirade that even a dolt like Johnny didn't want to risk on a regular basis.  The other two had learned the lesson and apparently had a smidge more sense than their half-brother Johhny Wahl.  Chicken with vegetables in the crock pot was a favorite, or at least, it was something Eric made often.  He also gave them turkey hot dogs because they liked them.  He hated to contemplate the off-brand, so he splurged for the Ocscar Meyer branded.  They also liked mac & cheese from the box, which Eric liked because it was cheap, even if they inhaled the stuff two boxes at a time.  Chicken nuggets and fish sticks got made maybe once a week; the kids liked them, but they were more expensive, and the fuckers expected french fries with them, so it was more than money than he could really afford, especially considering how gross they were.  He would have preferred to do pasta twice a week, but the three of them really objected, so he made sure it was every week without fail but only once.  He rarely prepared fresh vegetables, as he relied on frozen.  Not canned though.  Unless it was potatoes or something for a crock pot tomorrow, carrots were usually the only fresh vegetable he used regularly because they kept well.  Most weeks he had a package of frozen store-brand waffles in the freezer for breakfast one weekend morning, but they ate the entire box in one meal and probably would have eaten twice that.  Lunch on the weekend was usually a peanut butter or peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the stuff he kept for them.  If for some reason he had sliced cheese he made them ersatz grilled cheese sandwiches in the microwave.  The three of them also usually went through a box of yogurt tubes each week, the fuckers.  During times when there wasn't candy from some stupid fucking holiday, Eric kept a package of cookies for their dessert if they ate the vegetables and shit, but he ruthlessly rationed them, even if he didn't eat them himself.

For Eric's part, he didn't waste time in the morning waking up even 10 minutes earlier so that he could eat.  He brought a water bottle with him to work, filled with water from the tap, of course, but he didn't bring or eat lunch.  Usually the first thing he did when he got home was get the dinner for the kids going and made himself two sandwiches and ate them with a 16 ounce mug of the cheap OJ.  Occasionally he made some coffee in the coffee maker as well, but since he hated washing it out, that wasn't often.  If he was delayed even a bit in getting the dinner, he would be fucked later on, so the kids were on their own to get their reading and homework done.  They pretty much accepted that Eric would take any excuse to fuck with them over it, so they usually didn't make too much fuss.  While they ate, he got whatever he could done, like laundry left over from the weekend or some other odious task and drank that 16 oz mug filled with the shitty soda.  After they were done eating it was fucking hell to get them bathed or showered and ready for bed; the days when their were sports or practices were a billion time suckier because they were all more tired, and Eric was more miserable than usual knowing he would be up even later.  After the cleanup from dinner and the initiation of shower time, Eric made another two sandwiches and drank another mug of soda unless he was running low.  Those days sucked more.  Probably the greatest development in the nightly struggle was when they could read to themselves.  Eric was uncomfortably tired by the time they were in bed, but as the years dragged, he was in more and more pain and his sleep became less restful.  Every single night he was dreading the next day before he ever got to sleep.