My Girl Likes To Party All The Time, Party All The ZZZZZzzzzzz....

I have been nothing short of exhausted lately. Bone-tired, brain completely fried kind of tired. It just seems to keep getting worse, it's interfering with my ability to get anything other than 'basic tasks of the day' done (I do manage a few extras here and there, like the monster cake pops I made for my son's class the other day, but it's with extreme effort and sheer force of will).

There ain't no second chance against the thing with 40 eyes, girl.

What's the reason? I'm not entirely sure but I really think it's lack of quality sleep, and I think there are several things that have been affecting this. (Which makes it much harder to fix!)

Problem #1: My teeth hurt, and they tend to hurt more at night for some reason.
Solution: I get my permanent crown on February 4th, and I'm hoping that will fix this issue. In the meantime, I am turning to drugs. Advil manages to work most of the time, but usually when the pain gets worse the Advil doesn't help or it wears off in the middle of the night and the pain wakes me up, thus interrupting my sleep. I took Advil PM a couple times but we're out of that now, and we do have some Codeine left still. The problem with the drowsy drugs is that it's hard for me to wake up in the mornings, which I need to do in order to take care of my family. This leads to...

Problem #2: I am not a morning person. Even in the face of sheer exhaustion, as soon as the sun sets I am wide awake, and find it hard to go to bed or fall asleep any earlier than midnight. I have school-age kids so we're up early to get off to school five days a week, and don't usually get to sleep in TOO late on weekends either.
Solution: Go to bed earlier? Yeah, not gonna happen. I've tried this off and on my whole life. My body is just programmed to be up at night. I can't seem to help it. And I ENJOY it. I just don't enjoy the 'getting up in the mornings' part. It would be easier if the world would just start conforming to my schedule. I know I'm not the only night owl out there.

Problem #3: We recently moved into the basement and have been sleeping on the futon down there. It's a fairly decent futon mattress, but it's not the most comfortable thing in the world and I don't feel that I'm sleeping very well on it at all. Not only have I been increasingly more exhausted every day since we moved down there, but I also wake up every day with a new ache somewhere in my body. Back, shoulders, and neck seem to be the most affected. I'm pretty sure that this 'bed' is not at all good for me.
Solution: We've talked about several options, ranging from getting a new mattress to getting a foam memory topper. None of them are particularly cheap, and while some aren't terribly expensive either, we still have to save up for them. I'm starting to be so tired that I kind of just don't care though and am almost willing to just charge it. Which we're trying not to do, but when you're tired and delirious you don't always make the best decisions.

Problem #4: We just got two kittens. Nighttime is playtime! Wheeeee! They run over us, they jump, the mock fight and growl, they wake us up for petting and purring and love, they roll around in the (dry) bathtub and clunk into things. It's ridiculously adorable, but it also wakes us up about 50 times a night.
Solution: Kinda just have to wait this one out, I think. Eventually they'll grow out of it, and they'll be used to the house and the dogs enough where we will be willing to leave the door open and let them roam all over the place while we sleep. Right now, we just have to put up with this one. It's like having a baby, only instead of needing to feed it or change it, it runs all over the place and makes a bunch of noise.

We are wine botttleesssss!

I think the bed is the biggest problem. Being uncomfortable all night long, every night, is awful. So I think I will focus on solving that problem this weekend and see what a difference it makes. Because I'm really having trouble functioning lately. And I can't spend the rest of my life sitting around like a zombie, watching reruns of Roseanne.

But hey, I got new glasses, and I think they're pretty spiffy. So life's not all bad.

Mom Need Young Cook. Pool Boy Too.

So someone found my blog by using the search term "mom need young cook". I don't think my kids are quite ready for their first official job yet, but I'm sure they'd give it the old college try! Just give us a holler, we'll see what we can work out.

My son actually told me today that he's getting a job when he turns 18. I said "aren't you going to go to college?" "No!" he tells me. "That's too much work!" I told him that, depending on what he wants to do when he grows up, he might HAVE to go to college to learn the job he wants to do. Or that he might need to go to a specialized school to learn his trade. Or that he might not NEED to go to college, but that it's generally a good idea to go to college no matter what because you learn more and you usually make more money at your job if you have a college degree. "Well I'm going to need to go to pastry school," he tells me. "Because I want to make cakes for a living when I grow up!"

So, my intrepid googler, you may have come to the right place.


crushing graham crackers for cheesecake crust

Cooking With Kids

Try it some time. They're delicious!

No, no; I jest. I've never tried children. ("It's a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!")

I HAVE, however, had children assist me with cooking - many times. I've mentioned before on this blog how much my kids like to help me in the kitchen; my daughter in particular. They've been doing it since they were able to pull themselves up on the kitchen stool, and truth be told they're still wee little bits - at 5 and 3 years of age, cooking with my kids is often a challenge. They can't do many of the tasks yet - chopping, dicing, touching raw meat, measuring, pouring correctly, stirring anything that requires precision or actual WORK, putting things in the oven, taking things out of the oven, slaving over a hot stove - yeah. There's not much they CAN do safely or accurately yet. Even the tasks they ARE able to accomplish - pouring in certain ingredients, light stirring - often result in spills, slops, dumps, and extra things (dish soap, anyone?) being added when my back is turned. Cooking with kids is often a supremely frustrating experience.


"helping" me bake the lamb cake last Easter (ages 4 and 2). They could still both share the stool. Barely.

Despite the added hassle, I believe it is a very valuable experience for them. Of supreme importance in their young lives, even. And that is why I keep doing it. That is why I set that damn stool up in my tiny, tiny kitchen over and over, knowing full well I'm going to trip over it 50 times, every time they come running in and squeal "Mommy! Are you cooking? I want to cook with you!" Here are just some of the benefits of cooking with your kids:

1) They learn, from an early age, that food is not 'magic' in that it does not appear out of nowhere. This is an invaluable learning experience - teaching them about the individual ingredients you're using, where they come from, how they got to you, and how they change as you combine them with each other IS a sort of magic.

2) Being able to cook for themselves is a valuable life skill. Have you ever dated someone who lived on take-out or macaroni and cheese and PB&J's? Would you rather date that person or the one that can whip up a mean lasagna and garlic cheese bread on the fly? My kids will never have to rely on other people to cook for them, or rely on bland processed foods as dietary staples.

3) Kids want nothing more than to spend time with you (at least, when they're young). Cooking together will build lifelong memories of good times with Mom (or Dad) in the kitchen. I still look back fondly at Sunday "pancake" mornings with my Daddy. Create cooking rituals with your kids. You won't regret it.

4) Kids are naturally curious and creative. Cooking gives them an outlet and allows them to explore their passions, safely, with your supervision.

5) When you have to make dinner, and you're the only adult home, it's much easier to involve your kids than to send them off to watch TV or entertain themselves... it might make your job a little harder, but they're WITH YOU and not off, say, pouring water into the computer. (My son actually did that. He doesn't have a computer anymore.)

There are other reasons too, that's just what I came up with off the top of my head. I just think that food created with love and laughter tastes better. There are times when I am in a hurry, or I'm making a precise dish, and the kids are underfoot and I get frustrated, and I kick them out. It's true. I'm not perfect. (You're shocked, I know.) But more often than not, I include them. And I try to make it a positive, fun experience. And more often than not, I find that not only are they having fun... I am having fun too.

Today Oksana and I cooked dinner. It was a "take things in the house, combine them in some fashion, hope it tastes good" dinner (another valuable thing to teach them; you don't always have to follow a recipe to create something fantastic. Cooking is all about experimentation, and often it's more forgiving than you'd think!). We combined chicken, mushrooms, bacon, feta cheese, garlic, and some liquids (cream of mushroom soup, chicken broth, butter) and baked them all together. (It was delish, but I'm not posting the recipe yet because it needs a little tweaking.) She helped me wash the mushrooms, put them in the pan after I sliced them, and sprinkled the feta cheese. She ate her first raw mushroom (ANOTHER reason to include them - exposure to new foods, AND they're more likely to try them and get excited about it if they helped create the dish).

As we were getting started, shortly after she climbed up on the stool, she asked me what we were making and I told her what I was thinking about doing. "Doesn't that sound yummy?" I asked her.
"Yeah!" she exclaimed. "I love cooking with you, Mommy! I'm gonna do dis when I have babies. An' I'm gonna make dis, dis chicken and mushrooms and bacon, when I'm a growed-up."

And THAT is why I cook with my kids.