Ups and Downs, 28 February 2014

Today started with downs and ended with ups.  Jay and Z woke up first this morning, complaining of sore throats.  Not long after, G woke up with a hoarse cough and an intense whine.  Homeschooling today is going to be fuh-uhn, I moaned to myself.  (Seven-year-olds aren't the only ones who whine.)

The kids and I limped through the morning, getting a decent amount of homework done, although the subject matter didn't help our moods.  G's vocabulary exercise used a narrative about Anne Frank to teach words like "dreary," "tragic," and "appalled."  Not a cheery subject.  We did have a few nice moments together though, my favorite of which was standing just inside the garage, sticking our arms out into the fast-falling rain.

Because of the morning sore throats, I wasn't sure if the boys were going to get their weekly overnight stay with the FILs, but when I talked with Mrs. FIL around 1:00, the kids seemed to be acting/feeling pretty normal, so we planned on a 4:00 drop-off.  I happily dropped off for a nap, looking forward to saying goodbye to the kids for 18 hours and having date night with Jay.

At 3:00, I was awakened by noise from the vicinity of the Xbox 360: high-pitched crying from G, followed by yelled threats, followed by Z shouting, "I'm going to tell Mommy!!" followed by a frantic knock on my bedroom door, followed by indistinct tattling, followed by a wailing G stomping off to his bedroom, followed by the sound of muffled pillow-punching and a return of the hoarse cough.

It was at this point I texted Mrs. FIL and told her that the kids' emotional fragility indicated physical illness and they should probably stay home.  It was also at this point I felt particularly low.  I don't understand seven-year-old boys, I griped.  I'm so sick of the eye-rolling and the I-know-better-than-Mommy-does attitude.  He's way too sensitive.  I'm sure I wasn't this volatile as a seven-year-old.  Frankly, I had really been looking forward to getting rid of the kids for the evening, and now on top of my own disappointment I dreaded breaking the news to them.  Meanwhile, whimpers of, "This is the worst day EVER!" were floating from G's bedroom...and he hadn't even gotten the bad news yet.  I groaned. 

Then Jay called on his way home from work.

"Hey, so I hear the kids are too sick to leave tonight?" he asked.  I glumly answered in the affirmative.

"How about I pick up pizza on the way home, and we can eat it while we watch a movie, and then make popcorn," he suggested.

"Well," I brightened, "we do need milk anyway...so you could stop by the store to pick up the pizza and milk...and how about ice cream for root beer floats?"  Suddenly we had a plan for a fun evening and I had something positive to tell the kids!

It's amazing how well our sons respond to junk food + television.  There were cheers of excitement throughout the rest of the evening; in fact, when Z found out he could have a second glass of root beer, he cried out, "This is the best day EVER!"  G and I got cuddles on the couch instead of the discord we'd struggled with during homework this morning, and I further endeared myself to the kids by agreeing to watch a bit of a machinima show they and Jay enjoy.

But the true high of the day came when I tucked the boys into bed and settled into our little prayer time.  G prayed first.  "Dear God, please help the people with leukemia and the people with AIDS.  Please take away the AIDS from those people and make their bodies even more powerful than they were before.  And please help the people with malaria, and the ones with smallpox.  And please give orphans families, especially families who will understand their needs.  And I pray for the poor people, that you would give them lots and lots of money.  Amen."

Then Z prayed, "God, I love you.  Thank you for G and for my mommy and for my daddy and for all my family.  And thank you for you, God."

Standing by their bedside, all I could think was, Wow, I would have totally missed hearing these beautiful prayers from my beautiful children if today had gone as I'd planned.

As I gave goodnight hugs, G wrapped his arms around my neck and said, "Mommy, tonight was really fun!  But," he added, snuggling down onto his pillow, "the day did have some dreary moments."

All I can say to that is: I love seven-year-old boys!

The Wheels Are Turning, 14 February 2014

Today I rode my bike for the first time in years a while.  I was inspired to ride the 20 minutes to work so that I could get some exercise out of the morning before my kids got home from their overnight stay at the FILs', and it did feel good.  (Except on my sitter.)

The funny thing about being inspired to ride today is that I've spent my free time over the last 24 hours looking at car prices!  Jay and I are thinking and praying about what to do with the extra income I'm getting this year, and while our trusty 2004 Honda Civic is still trusty, it needs new paint, and I'm tired of not having cruise control or power windows, and I drive the kids around so much that I'd really rather drive something that looks sexy.  (Let's be honest here.)

But I dunno.  Spending thousands of dollars on something we don't need right now is a big decision.  Last night Jay and I watched an episode of a series on the history of Britain that covered millions in India and Ireland dying of starvation during the mid-Nineteenth Century, and I'm asking myself, "What am I doing to aid the starving of today's world?  How would having a new(er) car benefit the world?  So I'm grumpy driving my current car.  So what?"

And yet I'm considering taking the Civic to get a shampoo today and see if I get any bites on selling it...and a car dealership just sent me some quotes...and I can imagine myself zipping around town in a fuel-efficient, comfortable car that doesn't turn heads because of its ugliness...and I just don't know.

Don't think there's one right answer to this--although I'm sure some people would say there definitely is a right answer, one way or the other.

Gonna keep praying.  Want to do what's best.

Introvert Meter, 07 February 2014

Know what my favorite part of being alone in a quiet house is?  The quiet.  Oh, and being alone.

Today I awoke with one main objective: Recover.  No, not from the flu or a nasty shock or an injury, but from people.  Perhaps some of you don't know this, but I'm what I like to refer to as a "high-functioning introvert," which means that I--generally--don't hide in the corner during parties and--generally--love having people over at my house and--generally--can keep up an animated phone conversation, but all of those things expend energy that isn't recharged until I get some alone-time.  The more people-energy I use up, the more recharging I need.

Like this.

Yesterday I made a big mistake and skipped my normal two-hour siesta (my daily prescription of being alone in my bedroom with the door closed, during which I read some Scripture and then sleep).  I've skipped my naptime before without my Introvert Meter reaching critical lows, but the combination of 4 hours of office work Wednesday morning, followed by 2 hours of rowdy kid music classes, followed by co-leading a worship service, followed by a choir rehearsal; and then on Thursday driving five goofy kids 20 minutes to school, followed by grocery shopping (yes, being in a grocery store uses up people-energy, especially if one of my kids is with me), followed by a visit to a children's museum with a friend and her son--great hang-out time, but still depleting the Meter--, followed by helping both boys in woodshop at school, followed by driving goofy kids back from school, followed by making some work-related phone calls, followed by making dinner, followed by doing homework with the kids...!!!

I drove away from the house yesterday evening for my 7 p.m. Al-Anon meeting, but when I got there, I parked my car and sat staring out the windshield for about 5 minutes.  Each time I pictured getting out of the car and joining my friends in the meeting, I felt like throwing up.

I think even this kind of meeting would have been too much for me!

It was at that point I realized I was running on empty, and I drove straight back home, put on my pjs, closed the bedroom door, and sat in bed under the covers.  All I could do was stare at the wall.

By 8:00, I was asleep.

I'm gonna give myself credit and say that I look a bit chippier when I have a full tank than this fellow does, but I'm pretty sure Jay would attest that last night my expression looked exactly like the one on the right.

Going to sleep early saved me from self-destruction, but it didn't restore my Meter to "full," so when I woke up this morning I set some parameters for myself: 1) Take a nap this afternoon.  2) In the evening, put on pajamas at the earliest possible moment.  3) Don't hang out with anybody anywhere tonight.

Which is why I'm sitting in a quiet house.  By myself.  The only noises I hear are the kitchen clock ticking, rain pattering on the skylight, and the soft hums of my laptop fan and distant traffic.  Bliss.  (Quick word to explain why I'm the only one home...the kids are with Mr. and Mrs. FIL tonight, and Jay--who is not an introvert--is hanging out with buddies.)

Slowly but surely, I'm recovering my sanity, which is just in time!  Tomorrow is Baby K's 2nd birthday party, followed on Sunday by leading a worship service, followed by a Bible study, followed by a group dinner/Olympics viewing at a friend's house.  Followed by work on Monday...

But no need to think about all of that!  I'm doing what I need to do to recover today--which, by the way, is something I've been learning in Al-Anon.  :-)

P.S.  Shout-out to Mrs. FIL for taking me to a lovely early-Valentine's day lunch today!  She picked a quiet restaurant with delicious food and we had some great girl time.  The perfect way to get me loosened up and relaxed before my nap.  Thank you!!

Feeding Frenzy, 18 April 2013

Today was yet another example that I am my mother's daughter.  The drive to cook humongous amounts of food is apparently in my blood.

The difference between Mom's situation and mine, however, is that she had a very large family to feed all the food to.  I don't.  I now have several examples of wanting to feed my family of four and accidentally succeeding in preparing for a family of eight.  Or 12.

One example happened on New Year's Day this year.  My mom always prepared a particular ethnic dish traditional to our family on January 1st, and this year I thought I'd pick up the baton and continue the tradition with my boys.  The dish is a doughnut-like batter with raisins in it that gets fried into fluffy, golden-brown dumplings and then coated in sugar.  (Yum.)  Looking through my mom's recipes, I soon discovered she had about four different sizes of the recipe written down, and I wasn't sure which one to choose (she neglected to write down "Serves X number").  So I picked a size in the middle and went for it.

The fact that the size I was using called for 12 eggs should have tipped me off.

An hour later, I was still frying, and I had to make an emergency call to the neighbors across the street to help us eat them.

A more recent example is my purchase of 60 pounds of strawberries, because surely a mere 20 pounds couldn't make enough jam to feed my family.  I had to be rescued by a friend to help me get through the large task of processing them.  It was a sticky six hours, but I think we have enough jam now.

Now, as we speak, I am lying down recovering from tonight's bout of Monster Meal Madness.

It all started two days ago when I went into a grocery store I don't usually shop at, and saw that artichokes were on a good sale.  Oh, what a treat! I thought.  I'll get four.  So far, so good.  Four family members, four artichokes.  (Never mind that two of them are children who may or may not eat any artichoke, let alone a whole one apiece.  Just a minor consideration.)

Then I wandered over to the meat section and discovered a sale on pork chops.  Hey, that would be fun!  We could have a nice meal of pork chops and steamed artichokes.  I wonder how to cook pork chops.  I've never made them before.  I'll find a recipe online!  Naturally, the sale was on the "Max Packs" of meat, so I had to get a fairly large tray of the things.  But the three "men" of my family are big eaters, so I wasn't worried.

But this morning I had a brief moment of clarity that I probably actually had more food than we needed for one meal.  Remembering that my father-in-law was gone for the day on business, I invited his lovely new wife for dinner.  She gladly accepted!

Of course, now we had five people and four artichokes.  That wasn't quite right.  So what did I do?  I went to the store to buy another artichoke.  My FIL's wife called to say that he would be arriving from the airport around dinnertime, so he might be able to join us as well.  Super!  I put a second artichoke in the bag.

Then I stopped to think.  Wait, how many pork chops do I have?  I think there were five in the tray I bought.  I'm not so sure that's enough for six people.  So I went back to the meat aisle and sure enough, the Max Packs were still on sale.  I got another one.

Now I had 10 pork chops and six artichokes.  The meal needed something else to round it out, so I got two pounds of sweet potatoes to make oven fries along with it.  Eh, maybe we'd have a few leftovers, but that's better than not having enough food, right?

Reality didn't hit until about 4:00 this afternoon, an hour before dinner was supposed to be served, when I realized I'd need two pots to cook the artichokes in.  Okay, two pots, double the broth, no biggie.  (I still hadn't accounted for multiplying the time it took to trim the things.)  At 4:30, I had the globes steaming and got cracking on the sweet potato fries.  That was easy, since I have a machine that slices them.  They got popped into the oven at around 4:45.

About that time, Mrs. FIL arrived and asked if there was anything she could do to help.  Since I still had the meat to get to, I gladly accepted and turned over the artichoke cooking to her (turns out, she grew the things at one time and knows all about doneness and other important things). I pulled the two Max Packs out of the frig.

The recipe I was using called for four chops, and since I had 10, I multiplied the seasoning amounts times 2.5.  Even when I had to measure in 1/4 cup each of onion and garlic powders (one ounce), the magnitude of the matter didn't register.  But once I had the oil heated in my--large--electric skillet, another reality presented itself.

"Huh," I said out loud.  "I guess I'll have to use two skillets.  These pork chops are really big."  Mrs. FIL agreed.  Even so, I could only get eight chops cooking.  Two went back into the frig.

Now I had two pots boiling, two skillets frying, two pans of sweet potato fries baking, and two children whining that they were hungry and couldn't they eat yet??  Thank goodness for Mrs. FIL and her savvy with spatula and spoon.  I'll spare you the rest of the blow-by-blow, but by the time we sat down to eat, it was almost 6:00 and there were food and dishes everywhere.

When both children opted against artichokes, and one of them also declared he didn't feel well and only ate two bites of pork, and slender Mrs. FIL cut a pork chop in half to serve to herself--and I remembered in a rush that she and FIL regularly split entrees at restaurants--I admit I began to panic a little.  "Eat lots of artichoke!" I encouraged the adults with a forced smile.

What have I learned from this?

For one thing, don't plan on one artichoke or one pork chop per child.  For another, check the weight of the meat you're buying instead of counting the number of cut pieces.  My friends, when I stopped for a minute tonight and added up the weight of the meat I had purchased,  those two Max Packs included 10 pounds of pork chops.  Ten pounds.  For six people.  Mind you, not six Marines.  Two small children, two women (who both happen to be trying to keep their weight down), one man who traveled all day and wasn't hungry, and Jay.

By the way, thank goodness for Jay.  He made a valiant effort to eat as much as he could hold, bless him.

In the end, Jay and I will each have an artichoke tomorrow, and I'll be looking up whether or not it's feasible to freeze pre-breaded/fried pork chops.  Not that I feel like eating more pork any time soon.

I think I'd rather have some strawberry jam.