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Carol set her kitchen timer and came back to her seat.
“Now, I think this is mostly for the adults, but Mabel and I are hoping that the three of you will chime in with your opinions whenever you want to. We want to take them into consideration and make sure that everyone is happy with the way the house is being run. Now, of course, not everything we do is going to be exactly what you think we should do, and we can’t do everything you want, but we totally want to take your opinions into consideration.”
The girls looked unsure, as though they’d never been talked to by adults like that before.
“My first question is for Aunt Carol,” James said after the girls didn’t say anything.
“All right. I wondered where I was going to fit into this circus. Go ahead and tell me.”
“Actually, I wanted you to tell me. I’ve already talked to Mabel, and she is perfectly fine if you take over any of the kitchen duties that you want. Mabel and I have decided that she will continue to work as a vet, and her family, that’s me, Annabelle, Bernice, Caren, and Aunt Carol, will give her a hand when she needs it. That means we’ll go on calls if she wants us to, and we’ll also take care of most of the household chores. Of course, Mabel’s going to pitch in when she can, but the cooking and the laundry and the cleaning will mostly be Aunt Carol, me, and the girls. Does that sound fair to you?”
“You mean we’ll get to go with Miss Mabel when she goes to help people with their animals?” Bernice said, like she couldn’t quite believe it.
“You sure will. That was the whole point. We want you to be able to help. You’re part of this family, and while families are supposed to be fun, there’s also a lot of work involved, and that includes the cooking and cleaning and also taking care of animals.”
The girls looked like they weren’t sure how to process that, and they also seemed like they were too apprehensive to be as happy as they wanted to be.
“So you’re asking me if I want to do all the cooking?” Carol said.
“I’m asking you how much of the cooking you want to do. How much of the other work you want to do. We don’t want to throw everything on you and have it be too much.”
“I think I’d like to make all the meals, and someone else can do the laundry and cleaning. I’ll be in charge of the dishes and the table, although you want the girls to have chores that they’re in charge of, right?”
“I sure do. And if you’ll be in charge of making sure they do any of the kitchen chores we assign them, including dishes and cooking, then that would be great.”
“Cook? You want me to cook?” Annabelle said, like the idea was foreign to her.
“Would you be interested in learning to cook?” Carol asked.
“I can make spaghetti,” Annabelle said, like that was something to be proud of. “Then I can put hot dogs in it, and if you have peas, put peas in it, too, because Mom said that makes it healthy.”
Well, they were going to have their work cut out teaching the girls what actual healthy food was, but maybe having a garden would help with that. That was a project for next year though. It was a little late to try to get started this year. Although, they could probably prepare the ground.
“I think you can put gardening on the list of things we’re going to do.”
“You mean like grow plants? Because we grew bean plants in kindergarten. But when I took it home, it died,” Caren said, like kindergarten was a long time ago or something. He was pretty sure that she had just completed it last year.
Of course, to a seven-year-old, two years was a long time ago.
They continued to discuss the jobs that they would be willing to do, the things that they felt they were good at, and the things that they were interested in. Mabel was happy that James did not insist that the girls only do what they wanted to do, but that he would slant the chores in the favor of the girls’ interests and lighten their load in the areas where they weren’t as eager to help.
Although, everyone had to learn to scrub the toilets and clean the bathrooms, and no one was going to only get to do exactly what they wanted to.
Mabel figured that was a pretty good example of what real life was, since even if a person loved their job, there were parts of their job they really didn’t always enjoy. Or parts of their job that were sometimes hard.
All in all, it was a productive meeting, and as the kitchen timer went off, and they got up to go feed Denise, she felt that even if they didn’t stick to everything that they decided, they accomplished their main goal, which was making the girls feel like they were part of the family.
