It’s been a while since I’ve done a “diary -style” post and I kind of miss it. In a strange sort of way I’ve been floating through the blog and seeing where it will take me. Sometimes that is perfect and other times it feels a bit directionless.
The older the kids get the less I seem to have of uninterrupted work time. There is more driving back and forth, different school start and end times for each child. Allergy appointments, school meetings, and more. I still can’t quite figure out how families function with two parents and two jobs (or more). I guess the difference is the stress level. I feel the discombobulation but as for stress it’s rare. At the moment I have two kids home sick, one full-fledged fever and all, the other just run down and sneezy.
Whenever the kids are home sick, the TV goes on for a while, I let them watch what they like and later I might join them and put a show I like on so that I know they’ll tune out and doze off. We also always go out to run at least one errand. I find if they don’t get dressed and out of the house (barring some major illness or contagion factor) then they don’t sleep as well at night. We also ran baths this week. Henry went for the lavender bubbles and Isabelle had Kniepp’s rose bath salts. There’s nothing like a hot bath and a warm robe to help induce sleep.
Yesterday in the snow, I popped the MF Dulock brisket into my corned beef brine and it will have its own sort of bath for the next five days.
I couldn’t remember if my husband liked key lime pie or not, but I had made a key lime pie for the rest of us on Monday, it’s the kids’ favourite lately, and had noticed a coconut condensed milk at the store over the weekend. After confirming that he liked key lime pie, I went out and bought that last can of coconut condensed milk and made Dan his own dairy free version. The coconut condensed milk was a lot less viscous than traditional condensed milk so I was a little worried. I should have thought to add extra sugar, but I forgot. I added an extra egg yolk and then made a small cornstarch slurry to add to the mixture. I had to also let the pies cook a bit longer but they turned out well, albeit tart, in the end.
Last night I also started planning for Passover. We’re doing our seder on the totally wrong day, but it works for everyone’s schedule. I have some ideas of what I want to do and I think I’m going to try to do a beet cured salmon. I have had a little help with that on Instagram this week of all places.
The other thing that has been keeping me busy is just all the paperwork here and there. Signing up for summer programs, keeping schedules straight, getting all the necessary forms, and writing a whole bunch of cheques. I have also been trying to keep up with the constant task of streamlining all the junk in the house. I bring home lots of papers and the mail comes with catalogs and junk mail every day (although much less now that we unsubscribed from almost everything).
My biggest pet peeve now is the incessant number of calls (mostly from a computer with no one on the other end) that come to the house. It’s so agressive aand constrant and it makes me hate the telephone even more than I already do . I’ve never been tempted to get rid of a landline before this year. What is going on?
Well, it’s not all that exciting but that is what has been going on over here. Speaking of camps, if you haven’t signed up yet, I’ll try to get my act together and share some of our favourite programs over the years there really are so many great options in the area.
Leah's Life: Pearls and Oysters 