The best laid plans ...

My daughter was right when she announced on Monday that it had been a bad week.  She just didn’t understand the duration would include the other 6 days as well. On Tuesday, I started out strong, delivering the basket, meal, book and instructions to the house where there were supposedly 2 napping boys.  They were awake.  They saw me.  So I had to see them.  I couldn’t just leave.  So I hugged and cuddled the two younger boys a bit then told them that Grummy had to go home and clean up the kitchen.  That always seems to make sense to them.  Or it has always done so before.  Not this time.  I had to explain that I was heading to Big Debbie’s (my sister’s) house and needed to cook some food for her.  Which might have calmed them down, but one of them pushed the other off of my lap and the tears started.  Their momma had to intervene. 

 

I was going to stop for a couple of errands on the way home, but I had to go to the bathroom so I headed straight home.  And ended up behind an accident.  No one was hurt, but there were a lot of sharp pointy car pieces strewn across both lanes of the road, so it took a while for that to be cleaned up. 

When I finally got home and to the bathroom, I figured I wasn’t too far behind schedule even with the visit with the boys and the time on the road.  Then I remembered that I had only started one of the breads I was supposed to make to take to my sister’s for Thanksgiving.  So I rushed to start the second bread hoping that it would rise before midnight.  I made some sage noodles thinking I’d just cut them with the pasta machine then lay them out on parchment to keep them separated so they didn’t form doughy masses – sage dumplings.  This would’ve worked if I’d caught the noodles as they came off the cutter, but nooooo, I was being super efficient and while one hunk of dough was being cut, I was searching for the next hunk to line up.  I’ll know better next time.  This time I just had to do it piece by piece afterward.  There were approximately 2500 sage noodles served.

I then noticed that the dough I’d started earlier that day wasn’t really rising all that well.  The dough I’d started the night before was fine, so it wasn’t the yeast.  But it likely was the lack of yeast.  So I started that over and decided I could pop that in the oven in the morning. 

 

My Wednesday morning was going to be tricky, but doable.  I’d promised a neighbor that I’d help her make Stromboli at 8:30 am to take to her friend’s as an appetizer.  Then I would rush back home and load up my car and drop by my Dad’s, giving him the replacement ironing board (My sister broke it.  Really.  Why would I break an ironing board?) and then swing by and pick up one of my sister’s friends to take on up to Lake Geneva for Thanksgiving.  Basically, that meant that I had to wake up by 5:30, put the bread in the oven, take a shower and finish packing.  So that also meant that I didn’t really sleep since I was so afraid of missing the alarm.

By later afternoon Wednesday, I was in the throes of strep throat.  Wrapped in blankets, wearing a scarf wound around my neck and head, and using a hot water bottle.

So the boys aren’t spending the night.