The Routine:

In the morning, I prepare our older dog Clementine’s food– a special low protein kibble with a pump of fish oil and a sprinkling of tartar-removal flakes. Then I use a small syringe to shoot her liquid bacon-flavored medication, .5 ML, into a Pill Pocket, a big chewy doggy gummy with a hole in it. I tuck two and a half pills inside, too. I give her the Pill Pocket outside. Her favorite is the peanut butter pocket. She chomps it down, along with a fingertip if I’m not careful.

While she’s outside taking care of business, I get Cowboy, our younger dog, from his crate for his breakfast–regular kibble with a pump of fish oil and tartar-removal flakes. After that, he goes outside and gets a doggy vitamin, and Clem comes in for her doggy vitamin.

This way they don’t get into a scrap over food. They know the routine well. Any deviation confuses them. One time, Don forgot to close Cowboy’s crate for the night; when Clementine and I came downstairs in the morning, he was jumping all over us with a gleeful “Hey, ain’t my fault. Yippee!” dance.

Anyway, dogs taken care of, I start coffee. Then I stir my special mixture into cranberry juice to keep my body regulated, and swallow a handful of possibly worthless supplements and pills that keep my blood pressure in check. Routine.

Some mornings, all this busyness feels like too much. Even popping a waffle in the toaster is an effort, since I have to top my waffle with butter, cottage cheese, syrup, fresh fruit, roasted pumpkin seeds and pecans. That means getting all that stuff out of different cupboards and the fridge and then putting it all away again. Routine. Boring.

Then I remembered I’d bought a big box of Shredded Wheat last week. Not the bite size cereal, but the big ones, the biggest breakfast cereal ever. Big bricks of wheat.

Nostalgia

Shredded Wheat was my favorite breakfast as a child. First my mother put one massive biscuit into the bowl. She topped it with a pat of butter, and then poured hot milk over top. I sat at the kitchen table and waited till the butter melted, spooning more hot milk from the bowl over top. Then, when it was ready, I flipped that huge pillow of wheatiness over. Toasty crunchy wheat mixed with milk-softened wheat. A taste of creamy butter. No sugar. Heavenly.

I can’t tell you how happy my heart was to replicate this. Shredded Wheat. Mom. Warm full tummy. It tasted as good as I had remembered.

Not all foods revisited live up to our childhoods.

My mother didn’t buy a lot of candy. My most coveted find on Halloween was Mallo Cups. I just loved it. I’d root through my stash, spread out on the living room floor, hunting for them while my father got down on the carpet with me to talk me out of giving up a Mounds bar.

I tried a Mallo Cup maybe thirty years later to see if it was as good as I remembered. I tossed it out.

What’s not to like?

I did a little research while eating my breakfast, curious about Shredded Wheat’s nutritional value. I learned not everyone is a fan.

“Bicurious Robocop” says

Shredded wheat is, in fact, the worst cereal. It’s a mound of flavorless shit with the consistency of birch wood chippies. It goes soggy in milk within 45 seconds, and you have to devote the same degree of vigilance to eating it that you’d put toward defusing a nuclear bomb. It’s like a fucking race against time. The version of the cereal that’s just a giant hunk of wheat? GTFO. I gotta break this thing up before I eat it now, too?

–Board is Life

Yet Shredded Wheat is good for you.

A reviewer and a food biologist writes on Livestrong:

…shredded wheat cereal is one of the most nutritious options for a quick breakfast. Not only does it provide an impressive amount of fiber, protein and several vitamins and minerals, but plain shredded wheat doesn’t have the added sugar found in many other cereals.

–Is Shredded Wheat Good For You?

For me, it made the perfect no-fuss breakfast. I warmed the milk, poured it over, tossed some blueberries on top, and was transported back to my childhood kitchen.

The final word on routines

In case you wonder why my husband doesn’t help with the dogs in the morning, he covers their bedtime routine. That has its own particular sequence of steps to ensure they do their business before being tucked in. Cowboy, who is younger, is crated, and Clementine comes upstairs with us. I go upstairs early for a relaxing bedtime winddown that includes reading in bed. It works for us.

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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Learn more about her multi-award winning novel, In the Context of Love.
Learn more about her picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Learn more about her latest poetry chapbook, Sleepwalker
Advanced sales on Sleepwalker are now until March 24, 2023 — for every copy sold, Linda will make a donation to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Order here

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