Bento Box Bitch Slap

I'm not a violent person.  In fact, I tend to avoid conflict at all costs.  That being said, there's one group of people that I'd like to bitch slap silly and then drag them behind my SUV.  Those people are the ones that make kids lunch into an art form. 

Pinterest is FULL of pictures of absolutely adorable ideas for lunch.  Make your fruit look like a tropical island.  Hard boil eggs in the shape of hearts. Create monkeys out of pita bread.  Bento box style nosh that probably stakes 2 hours to create.  What. The. Fuck. 

Aren't those lunches gorgeous?  If I was creative (which I'm not) I still wouldn't bother.  They would take hours to create and Lena would bring home a smashed version of them at the end of every school day.

I can't even get my kid to eat her favorite foods at lunch - there is NO effing way that I am spending hours to create crap that just gets thrown out.  I tried early on to be creative.  Pepperoni and cheese with crackers. Sandwiches cut out into cute shapes.  Fruit and vegetables, all beautiful and colorful. Healthy, well rounded, adorable.  And, every day the lunchbox would come home barely touched - and I would have a ravenous barracuda tossed into my car to attack us.

So, I switched tactics.  "Lena, what would you like to eat for lunch?  It needs to be healthy and have some protein in it."   She would choose her food and then make her lunch.  I thought maybe she'll eat it now that she created it. And...not so much. She's a fruit-aholic.  So, I loaded her lunchbox with delectables of the fruit persuasion.  Ahahahahaha - squashed berries - bruised bananas and a giant ball of hungry, whining, crying misery in my car.

Now I'm to the point of well, "here's a bunch of shit that won't go bad since you don't eat it anyway."  Peanut butter crackers, yogurt pretzels, etc.  She *may* lick the peanut butter.  I have taken action since I can't sit on the lunch table and force feed her - apparently they frown upon that practice in public schools.  Whatever. My solution?  I take a non-fancified sandwich and shove it in her mouth right after I kiss her hello.  It stifles the hangry freakin the freak out so I can drive home without having to yell "I just picked you up from school.  Can't we PLEASE have 5 minutes without you crying?"