TriangleDads.com

I’d rather not talk about breakfast today.

For dinner, though, I learned a thing or two about our frozen entrees. We found some tasty frozen pasta meals that they love, but I’m all-thumbs in the kitchen. These things have their cooking instructions printed on the bottom -- several steps’ worth. The first step is to pull back the cover and microwave the box for three minutes. That was easy enough.

But I can never remember Step 2. It’s something to do with stirring certain ingredients separately -- these things have pasta, cheese sauce and occasionally something akin to meat. They are to be kept separate from one another in Steps 2 and 3. It’s easy to keep them separate when they’re frozen solid, but that’s prior to the completion of Step 1.

At the onset of Step 2, the cook is left with three partially runny lumps in the same box, with no dividers. Yet the lumps must be stirred and kept from mixing with the other lumps. This is something like putting three raw eggs in a bowl, then telling somebody to break the yoke of one and stir it up, without disturbing the other two eggs.

Further complicating matters is the fact that, as of Step 2, the cook has an open container of freshly microwaved partial liquids, with further instructions on the bottom. That’s where I ran into trouble. I was certain Step 2 had something to do with mixing, but I wasn’t sure what. So I turned the container over, to read the bottom.

Breakfast rations are dwindling, and I fear I’ll have to break out the dreaded grits by week’s end. My little cereal killer continues to ravage the pantry, despite my continued insistence that the individual servings are not a sustainable resource. To get more would entail shopping.

I can’t shop while they’re in school, because I have to work. And I can’t shop at night, because I’d rather feed them lint than take them into a grocery store by myself. I’d be outnumbered, and my zone defense is not that good. Hence, the cereal must last.

This was supposed to be Mini-Wheats Day. Part of my wife’s pre-departure counseling was: Never give either son a chance to claim that the other is receiving preferential treatment. Anything other than strict adherence to these guidelines may result in sheer chaos and a complete breakdown of familial infrastructure.

To that end, they are to be given the same thing during one sitting -- the same-sized portions of the same type of product (made by the same brand), with the same size, shape and color of auxiliary utensils. As is a servant’s tradition, I am to eat in separate quarters at a separate time.

Quite simply, one brother may not have milk in a blue cup if the other has juice in a red cup, or if Daddy has amber liquid in a clear bottle.

First full day on my own, and my sanity is no worse than it was before. We managed a grit-free breakfast, thanks to those ten remaining cereal cups. This morning, the call was for Lucky Charms, which of course means Thing 2 picked out and ate the marshmallow bits from the top of his cup before declaring he was “finish.” But I knew he wouldn’t go hungry, since his daycare provides a real breakfast; his weekday morning meal at home is more like a pre-breakfast snack.

Thing 1 doesn’t get breakfast at school, so I had to do a better job with his breakfast and make sure he ate enough to get through the morning. To that end, I told him to eat all of the marshmallow bits, not just the ones on top.

I also discovered why my wife wants the television turned off every weekday morning -- watching it is counterproductive, as “Blue’s Clues” is a distraction from eating. But I managed to wolf something down during a commercial break.

My wife left me yesterday. Don’t worry, though -- she’ll come crawling back, just like always. That’s how tired she typically is after a long business trip. What did you think I was talking about?

She flew out early yesterday afternoon for a two-week training session in Peoria, Illinois. Leaving me with a couple of things to handle.

Thing 1 is a charming-but-precocious, preternaturally smart seven-year-old with a penchant for stalling and losing focus on the world around him as he brings it all to bear on some fascinating fact in an almanac, or something shiny.

Thing 2 is a deceptively cute, street-smart three-year-old who reveals an evil glint in his eyes whenever he smiles at me, and who has an appetite for sugar and destruction.

For ten business days, my mission is to wake them, dress them, feed them, drop them off, go to work, pick them up, feed them, bathe them, dress them, and get them to bed. It might not sound so bad, but with my wife out of town, you have to understand -- the total parental manpower in this household has been reduced by a good 75 percent....

Every dad has an inner guy – the voice of his former loutish self, now allegedly tamed in the name of marriage and parenthood. Mine is named Cretin. I hide him from my sons and only occasionally reveal him to my wife.

To that end, I have developed a tool any dad can use – the poker face. Mine helps me bluff against Cretin’s true feelings, and hides my lack of conviction in whatever I’m outwardly saying: “Sure, I’d love for your parents to come and stay with us for a week” or “That’s okay, I wasn’t interested in the game, anyway – I’d much rather help you do the laundry.”

My poker face also helps prevent my sons from acting like I once did. Whenever I try to teach them a moral lesson, no matter how unconvinced Cretin is of its rightness, I wear my poker face and hope the boys buy it. Sometimes it works. One evening it didn’t.