[Porsche-O-Phile]

I think the loss of a family dinner is one of the biggest tragedies of our "modern" existence. I imagine the situation my wife and I are in is not that atypical - we both routinely put in 9-10 hour days at work and after that plus an hour plus driving home in commuting hell, nobody feels like cooking. I actually like to cook, but there's no way I'm going to walk right in the door and want to roll up my sleeves and make a mess out of the kitchen that has to be cleaned up. She feels the same way. It's much easier to grab something before leaving work or to pick up the phone and order a pizza, or just go out.

For the rare stay-at-home dinner, I absolutely can't stand having a boob tube on. Time with others is so valuable and precious, I don't see why one needs the mind-numbing distraction box droning away trying to sell me tampons or incontinence products or whatever while I'm trying to eat and enjoy a little free time with my significant other. If someone insisted that they let me leave the TV on while having dinner I'd be actually offended, since it means that I'm obviously not important or interesting enough for them. Tivo helps a lot with this issue of getting the "TV time" shoved into my schedule at MY convenience instead of the stations. . . If they could only come up with a Tivo box now that automatically skipped the commercials so I didn't have to manually fast-forward through them, I'd buy it in a heartbeat!

Another thing that bugs me is the fact that I'm trying to live a healthy lifestyle and like to go running in the evenings. Problem is, if you don't get home until 6 or 7 and it takes an hour to unwind, then you eat dinner - you're not going to go run for at least an hour or two after that or you're just going to blow chunks. Also, it's tremendously unhealthy to eat ANYTHING in the late evening (after about 7pm anyway for most people) since the body converts almost all of it to fat. This is another arguement in favor of having a light meal late in the day before leaving work - maybe around 5 or 6, then going home and going for the run at maybe 7 or 8. Far better lifestyle from a health / nutrition standpoint but still not at all helpful in terms of having quality family time at dinner.

Another thing I absolutely can't do is eat in the presence of young babies. Maybe it's a thing with me, but I find it absolutely revolting when a young child is dripping / spitting / drooling that greenish pasty baby-food crap all over the place - their face, clothes, floor, table and generally everywhere other than where it should go. Either that or grabbing fistfuls of pasta or whatever other mucky goop they're being fed and shoving it in the general vicinity of their mouth. Just freakin' gross. I just get literally nauseated by it to the point where I won't be able to eat myself. Maybe I'm insane, dunno.

If we're invited to my relatives or friends (that have kids) I will always politely figure out a way around it or grab something on the way there and then either not order food or just have a drink or something to avoid getting ill, but since this thread is on the subject, why the f*ck can't those with kids teach them to eat properly? If the kids are extremely young, they have a bit of an excuse I suppose, but I don't know why I have to be subjected to such a disgusting display while I'm supposed to be eating. Seriously, our dog used to eat at the same time as us and that never bothered me - at least she knew how to eat cleanly! Babies? Just gross.