I mostly spend each day living in brief gulps from one moment to the next. In between tickle fights and time outs, I also sweat it out each day on the tightrope that is PPD and all its repercussions in my family, my health, my marriage and my sense of humor. Some days are good, some days only wish they could aspire to the high ranks of pond scum, but it's all part of my life. And it's all worth it.
Feed me!
My pantry is stacked with cans, boxes, bags of rice. The spice rack seems to multiply, spilling forth little colorful bottles every time we open the door even though it already takes up an entire cabinet. The door of the fridge is crammed with little jars and anonymous bottles. The shelves in the freezer are about to collapse beneath their burdens of heavy blocks of leftovers and mystery bundles tucked into every nook.
But there is nothing for dinner. NOTHING. Tonight I will stand in the kitchen at 4 P.M. with a vague feeling of panic gnawing at my diaphragm. Moving from pantry to open fridge to open freezer in a rhythmic dance, all the containers will develop a blurred quality of total uselessness.
I resorted, one weekend long ago, to taking a written inventory of all the miscellany crowding the shelves, even going so far as to organize the contents by main dish and sides. It seemed so logical, it felt so freeing to actually see that I could, in fact, make a meal with only the food in my kitchen.
But there is STILL nothing for dinner. The universe has assigned evil pixies to my kitchen who transform the bounty into total uselessness at 3:55 P.M. every single day, leaving nothing but peanut butter and jelly and 3 bags of bread with only the end crusts left.
Perhaps that seems a little unhinged, but as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t really after you.
Oh, yes they are after you! They’re the little evil fairies determined to make you think you’re crazy, and they succeed! The dinner fairies, on the other hand, have either been killed off by those other ones, or they’ve been outsourced to India, because I can’t find one to save my life. Sadly, I have these bizarre bursts of creative culinary genius that result in me making a vegan kale bisque, not because we’re vegan, you understand, but because I KNOW a vegan, and I’m curious as to how one might cook if one WAS a vegan. And this is, you understand, because making pork chops would be much too easy. So I make the kale bisque which gets barely coughed down by the offspring and politely sipped by the husband, only to find, several days later, a “note” written by my daughter, titled “Wish for a Better Life.” Among her identifications as to why life isn’t great now is “Mom makes weird meals that no one likes but has to eat.”
FEED THEM CAKE, I say!!!
Or, in the interests of postponing the inevitable, alphabetize your spice rack–that always impresses the baby-boomer generation when they come over. They’ll overlook the inch-and-a-half of dust on your bookcase if you tell them you alphabetized your spice rack. Or so I’ve heard…..
Comment by Heather — October 18, 2009 @ 1:31 am