The dinner? Well, the dinner was marvelous. Juicy chicken breasts with orange-honey glaze; challa bread; roasted potatoes, fresh kale, pear, and feta cheese salad. Bienenstich cake.
It was the timing that was tricky.
I had
spent my third day in a row in abject misery. Our new air conditioning
unit at work was fried, and inside temperatures had climbed to above
ninety degrees. (Yes, I did actually bring a thermometer from home, and
I did actually check.) After sauteeing in that for nine hours a day,
three days in a row, I was not at my most patient self. It took about
six hours at home before the sound of the electric fan that had been set
up next to my cubicle stopped rattling my brain.
I felt ready for bed the minute I got
home. I peeled off my sticky top and skirt
and got right into my nightgown. Then, I ran into a little naked person in the hall. "You're naked," I
pointed out, rather brilliantly.
This set him off in peals of laughter. "I just had a bath," he said. My husband had my kids bathing before dinner, which is not the usual schedule but turned out to be ingenious, as we had dessert after bedtime.
My husband apologized that he was behind schedule.
He'd had to stop everything, he said, to help a daughter with her
homework. "Her geography teacher told her false information," he said,
"and I had to get her to unbelieve it."
Her assignment was to make a map of our capital
city. "Her teacher told her to make the city center the east doors of
the temple," he explained. "So, everything she was doing was like a
half-block off on her grid and she couldn't make it work right." City
center is actually in the middle of an intersection. Everyone knows
that, we thought.
"And he told her," he said with some disgust, as he
whipped up an egg-white coating for the challa bread, "that the Mormons
made that the city center because they believe when Jesus comes back, that
will be the spot on which he will stand."
"I've never heard that before in my life," I said.
"I know!" he agreed. "It seems like if people hear something once, they perpetuate it whether it's true or not."
"It's easy for people to believe whatever they hear about a minority group," I agreed.
Dinner seemed hours away, and I went to settle down with the newspaper and de-stress.
My little boy reminded me that it was Back-to-School Night.
Yippee. My favorite.
"Will you go and see our art project?" he asked, hopefully. "It's really neat."
So, before dinner was ready, I was pulling my
clothes back on and heading back to the school. We ate hurriedly during the half-hour between
sessions--when they're trying to force you to go to a
PTA meeting. Then we hurried back again for the presentations in the
other kids' classes.
I had told my husband that I wanted to lose a few
pounds before my upcoming surgery, as I anticipate that it might make me
gain weight, and I would hate to go up from here. But it seemed every
single menu item had sugar in it. Even the meat and vegetables.
"You have to eat sweet things at the beginning of the year so that you will have a sweet year," he explained.
We're not Jewish! It's not our new year!
By the time I was cramming the almond-studded cake into my mouth an hour after my preferred bedtime, I felt soggy with fatigue. Paul was also tired, but triumphant in his accomplishment. "You know you do this for yourself, don't you?" I ventured to ask.
"Yes," he admitted. "And I had a lot of fun doing it. I just got behind because she needed help with her homework."
As worthwhile a facet of parenting as making a fancy dinner, I would say.
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