“You couldn’t eat any more quieter, could you?”

These are the first words spoken to me in over 13 minutes of me sitting in my bed, rifling through the hard pretzel bag and chomping (molars only) the remains of last evening’s bag.

“Jesus mom!” she continues.

That’s right- about 20 minutes earlier I got into a discussion with my middle child about her needing to return to her own bedroom- after fleeing her room days ago upon seeing two stink bugs.

Unfortunately, she did not like the fact that her annoying, younger brother could still sleep in here but she can’t. Some words were received (her nasty ones to me) and I decided to try to chomp her out of the room with the remaining arsenal in the pretzel bag.

At least 13 minutes passed by without a word, insult, huff, or grunt from my daughter as she sat in the lounge chair to the side of the bed… as I chewed those broken pieces as if I was alone. In fact, as I kept inserting them to my mouth, I had that tired chew for a little, the one where you sigh/hum on the exhale. Not a word from her- which was certainly rare- until I was nearing the end of the bag.

Apparently, all her bottled up resentment as I was chewing just combusted- because after her comments, she decided sleeping with stink bugs is better.