Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Thankless Effort

I clearly don't take photos for Gourmet magazine, because my food looks ugly in the photo here. Actually, my dinners often look ugly for real, but more than often taste just fine - I just won't get an A+ for how I plate food.

So for some crazy reason today, I took on Lasagna Bolognese (not a family recipe, but from Cook's Illustrated, my favorite cooking fanatics). And yes, I spent literally all afternoon cooking the darned thing. The verdict? Well, the noodles overcooked a little, but the taste was great and I'll likely make it again but cook it at a lower heat for a longer amount of time. More importantly (and annoying), however, is that my kids refused to eat any of it - Molly threw it on the floor, Claire kept saying "disgusting" and Lily just left it alone. I know they're just kids, and I shouldn't have expected any better, but it does frustrate me a tad when I just spent four hours cooking and no one will eat it but the adults. Please, please tell me they'll eat better some day, and actually appreciate my efforts.

We've had a hellish couple of days. After my posting Sunday night, Molly came down with a cold and wouldn't go to bed until 4am. Kyle gave up at 1:30am, so I was on Molly duty until 4am. She wouldn't sleep anywhere but on me, so I ended up with only spotty sleep between 4am and 8am. I was a zombie Monday and didn't go to the office. The nanny helped with the kids while I caught an hour's nap and worked from home, but I was pretty darned nonfunctional. Last night I took Molly to the clinic only to find out her ears are just fine for now (which means we'll be revisiting tomorrow or Thursday for a real infection). She still stayed up until midnight last night, and while Kyle did care for her, I just couldn't settle down and slept poorly despite my overwhelming fatigue.

Lily is similarly in bad shape and will likely need a clinic visit tomorrow. She is a total snot spigot and is starting to cry about little things which tells me she is in pain. I write this post rather early, just as the twins are going to bed, so I don't rule out having to take a kid to the clinic tonight if someone refuses to go to sleep. I'm exhausted and tired of listening to the twins cry and whine. Maybe the lasagna effort was some level of escape from them. Who knows.

I'm going to hunker down and wait for someone to start screaming in her bed now. But one last comment: go out and rent "Young at [@] Heart" immediately (it's actually with the @ sign in the name of the movie, but this post sees it as an email address if I type it correctly so I inserted the 'at'). I got it at Blockbuster in new releases. It's a life-affirming documentary about old folks (we're talking people in their 80s and 90s) who sing pop/rock songs. The show see-saws between making you belly laugh and cry your eyes out, often just minutes apart. It's not a long documentary, about an hour and a half, so it's not a huge time commitment and it's worth every minute. You'll thank me for the recommendation. Or thank Newsweek, which gave me the impetus to rent it.

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