School starts this week, as do Sports. My husband starts a call week on Friday night. The chaos is ramping up and my only defense is running away Extreme Uptight Organization.
Let’s see if I can assemble all the elements necessary for meal planning.
Carla has Sports Events two nights this week. One night may or may not involve going to dinner at my in laws’ rental. Carla will not be eating at home three nights this week; however, I need to supply dinner for each sports event. In fact, I could supply dinner for all the kids on her team, but I cannot figure out how to access the spreadsheet of dinner volunteers one of the moms put together.
I feel a panicky slash grumpy digression about Sports Events Sustenance coming on. Gird yourself.
None of the parents wants to be in charge of organizing dinners for the kids, although the aforementioned mom did (supposedly) create a spreadsheet so we can sign up to bring food for each game. One of the other parents noted that her child doesn’t like sandwiches, which – well, honestly, Carla doesn’t like sandwiches either, but what the actual fuck is a person supposed to provide for dinners when sandwiches are off the table? There are only so many times the team can eat Chik-Fil-A nuggets for dinner, right? (Carla, perhaps, would disagree.) I am sure other people’s kids eat a variety of foods, but 99% of the things that a) my particular kid will eat that are b) nourishing and nutritionally balanced are IMPOSSIBLE FOODS to provide for sporting events.
First of all, I don’t even know when these kids are expected to eat; practice starts after school and games start at, like, 4:00 or 5:00. Are they planning to eat these meals on the bus? In the fifteen minutes between school and practice during which they are also expected to change?
Second of all, sure, a sandwich or some chicken nuggets seem fairly easy to scarf down in a few minutes, but the other things Carla likes (salmon! tacos! steak! meatballs!) seem much less easy if even doable for the venue. Other (semi) nourishing foods – like hummus and veggies or cheese and crackers – don’t strike me as calorically rich enough to sustain kids through an entire game, and that’s without mentioning that Carla won’t even eat hummus or any other sort of dip with her veggies. Nuts and nut butters are verboten, so there goes that source of high-calorie protein and fat. Maybe I could get away with creating some sort of charcuterie-esque “dinner,” with ham and pepperoni and cheese and veggies and fruit… but that sounds time consuming and logistically complicated (how would I serve it to a large group?) (keep in mind that I WORRY ABOUT GERMS AND FOOD SAFETY). Bagels and cream cheese and maybe some lunch meat has potential, but I don’t know how many bagels with cream cheese and lunch meat my kid will eat in a season. There’s pizza, I guess, but the other complicating factor is that the dinners need to be delivered by the parent (as in, not by Door Dash or a local delivery person) before the game starts, which means I would have to pick up pizza and take it immediately to wherever the kids are and sometimes I don’t want to do that.
In years past, we’ve stopped for dinner (usually Chik-Fil-A) after games, because my kid is starving… but I would really love to not do that, for so many reasons. One of which is the rumored extreme amp-up of homework this year. HOW is Carla going to do sports, homework, AND dinner and still get to bed early enough to ensure adequate sleep? What do other children eat for dinner? HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS? I am back to wanting to stride briskly into the sea.
My mother made us dinner every night when we were visiting their house. It was luxurious to have a home cooked meal to enjoy, but even more decadent was not having to think about what to make for dinners. But now *I* am the one in charge of the thinking and planning and making, and… well, I have to suck it up, Buttercup, because that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Or something.
Dinners for the Week of August 17
Szechuan Stir Fry: I bought the ingredients for a fresh veggie (and chicken) stir fry last week and haven’t been able to bring myself to assemble them into eating shape. Let’s not waste all those yummy veggies.
Two Dinners for Sports Events: For one night, I think I’ll go with my charcuterie plate idea, at least for Carla. And maybe the bagel and cream cheese idea for the other night? Should I try to sign up to bring dinner for the whole team, or wait until later in the season? WHAT DO SPORTS TEAMS EAT FOR DINNER?????
That’s all the time I have for meal planning panic, Internet. I have a PT appointment, Carla has sports practice, there’s a mandatory school meeting, and some sort of orientation during which the kids are supposed to get their locker assignments. Let the Back-to-School Bedlam begin.
I am assuming that you want an update on the cat, who, when last we spoke, was at the vet getting neutered.
He is fine. A little depressed, in my estimation, and possibly a little bit embarrassed and/or miffed by the state of his testicles, but fine. Also, if you’d rather not read several tedious paragraphs about my cat’s post-surgical experience, I urge you to skip right on down to the list of dinners below.
I am FINE.
The recovery period after the neutering procedure is supposedly two weeks. The instruction sheet the vet sent home with me says that under no circumstances are we allowed to remove the cone they sent home with us. (The vet doesn’t call it a cone; they call it an Elizabethan collar, and it cost $20, by the way. For $20, I would think that it wouldn’t rotate so that the Velcro/opaque segment of the cone is directly in front of his sight line, but apparently I’m wrong.) With the cone on, the cat cannot eat well or drink water easily, he cannot clean himself, he keeps running into things, his balance is off so he can’t successful jump onto something even as short as a step, he cannot rest his head comfortably, his neck is constantly itchy, and he adopts various mournful positions that make him look very pitiful indeed. His fur is greasy and he lies around a lot more than is typical. I do not see how this is sustainable for two weeks.
So: We have been removing the cone as frequently as possible and simply supervising the cat so he doesn’t lick anything. He does wear the cone – excuse me, Elizabethan collar – at night, when he sleeps in a bathroom we’ve converted into a temporary cat cave.
The vet and the internet insisted that I buy special litter for him, post-surgery. It’s pellets made up of newspaper and it’s probably much better in many ways than the litter we’ve been using since we got him, but he refuses to use it. He has taken to meowing at us when he has to go to the bathroom, and one of us has to escort him to his regular litter box. (The litter box is in a part of the basement we don’t want him in when he’s not in a cone; too many niches for him to hide in and commence furtive licking.)
One of the other admonitions in the vet’s instructions is to keep him calm. For two weeks. He’s actually been pretty good, so far. We have a shoe box he likes to play in, and he’s been batting springs and fuzzy worms around inside the box, and that seems to occupy him pretty well without requiring a ton of athletic movement. Carla made him a special water toy that we learned about online but he wasn’t super into it. Maybe we’ll have to try it again. He’s also spending a lot of time in the sunroom or at the window in my office, monitoring the bug and squirrel activity outside.
Okay, okay. Here is a photo of him in his Elizabethan collar. Please don’t tell him I shared this with the entire internet.
Revisiting all his life choices, trying to figure out which one led him here.
Okay! Enough about the cat! Let’s discuss my other favorite topic: FOOD.
Now. It is September, and school is back in session, and I need to get back into the dinner planning groove. Let’s see: we’re visiting friends for dinner tonight. Carla is trying a new sport this fall, and she has games every week. That means I need at least one meal each week that produces enough leftovers for us to eat after her game. We’ve been pretty consistently doing at least one night of Search the House for Your Own Meal, and one night of takeout. So that leaves me with three meals to make.
Oh – that reminds me: I keep trying to figure out snacks I can send to school with Carla that she can eat before sports practice or before a game. The snacks can’t have nuts, and I would prefer that they have some nourishment in them, rather than just calories. I’m not opposed to “just calories,” and in fact have been sending her with Cheez-Its and cheese ballsand granola bites and fruit snacks because she will eat those things… but I would love ideas for things that have other benefits besides calories. I’m not sure those things exist, though, especially nut-free things that do not require refrigeration. I am happy to BAKE things, as well. And, even though my “she will eat this” expectations are low for most new/nourishing foods, I am willing to TRY things, even if Carla ends up refusing to eat them. If you have any ideas, let me have ’em.
Okay, back to the dinners.
Dinners for the Week of September 1-7
Salmon Burgers with Cucumber Quinoa Salad: We have salmon burgers in the freezer, so all I have to do is make the salad, which I can then eat for lunches.
Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken: My parents return to our part of the country this week, and I want to have them over for dinner and to meet the kitten. Greek salad has kind of become my go-to for guests – it’s so easy to prep in advance, and it’s so tasty.
Beef Birria: You know what else I have in the freezer? Beef birria! And we have enough for at least two meals. I plan to make the tacos in the oven (as in this recipe) rather than on the stove. And then maybe I’ll turn the ingredients into enchiladas (a la these chicken enchiladas) the second night.
I am loving the thoughtful comments about whether or not I should tattoo eyebrows on myself. THANK YOU. I have truly found My People.
Here are six things on my mind this morning.
School Year Frets In Session: While it seems like a lot of the country has already headed back to school – in fact, school buses appeared this week in my neighborhood like a noisy flock of migratory birds – we are still holding onto the last tatters of summer with our teeth and fingernails. It has become increasingly difficult to ignore the impending school year, though. And I am STRESSED. Middle School, y’all.
Maybe I need to write an entire post about all the things that are freaking me out about Middle School (top of the list: MY TINY BABY IS GOING TO MIDDLE SCHOOL), but right now I am thinking mainly about the schedule aspect of it. A bunch of wonderful extracurricular activities have manifested themselves, and I am doing my very best to walk the fine line between “my kid would LOVE that” and “if she does this activity we will all go insane.” For instance, there is a local activity that she would enjoy SO MUCH, but it begins at 3:45 after school and school pickup begins at 3:10 and it takes 30 minutes to drive between school and the activity, so it would be doable but only if I got to the carline at, like, 2:30 and she got out the door immediately at 3:10 and we didn’t hit any sort of traffic or need to pee or any of the other delays we have faced in the past. So. That activity is just not going to happen this year, and I have to trust that it will be available in a more workable form at some later time, or it just isn’t Meant to Be.
We have also signed her up for two sports this fall, which is GREAT. But the one sport is notoriously weird about assigning practice slots – like, they wait until the week of to say, “Hey, your practice day and time is X,” and then they are unable to accommodate any change requests. I learned this the hard way last year, and fortunately the coach was very kind about allowing Carla to be on the team even though she was fifteen minutes late to every single practice because she had a conflicting extracurricular. So: I am trying to wait to find out the sports schedule before I schedule her for anything else, but that’s HARD, because spots are filling up.
I did reach out to an instrumental teacher who comes highly recommended, because I guess I thought we would have some sort of conversation about Carla’s experience with this instrument and how practices go and whether there are recitals and what practice expectations are etc. etc., but instead the teacher wanted to know Carla’s availability and I don’t know that. Whoops. I guess I should have waited to reach out????
The other sport is going great, but Carla has no set lesson time. This worked fine during the summer, because it was the only thing we had going on. But I need to KNOW. I want to have a calendar that has everything arranged very neatly IN ADVANCE.
There is an academic extracurricular I want Carla to take as well, but I am waiting until we know the schedule for the previously mentioned activities, and ideally I would want to see how school goes for awhile first, before adding it on, but I don’t know if that’s feasible????
And then Carla will probably try out for the school play, but auditions take place later in the fall so I cannot worry about it now.
I know this sounds like A Lot, but it feels a little bit more workable than last year’s extra curricular schedule. At least now, when it is half formed and entirely theoretical. I just want things SET.
Friend Visit Fret: While I am fretting about things, I might as well fret about an upcoming visit from my dearest friend. We have known each other for THIRTY-TWO YEARS which sounds bonkers to me. Anyway, she is coming to visit and I am so excited I can think of little else. It’s quite an emotional ping-pong match in my brain right now, what with the Middle School Scaries bopping around with the more Happy Excited Anticipatory Anxiety of hosting my friend. What will we DO? What should we EAT? Would it be nice for her to meet some of my Here Friends, or would that be weird for everyone? Do I need to schedule a bunch of touristy-type activities so she can experience the city? Or should we just take relaxing walks together and then hang out by the pool? I think she is looking more for the latter, in which case I need the weather to cooperate, but it might be nice to do one or two touristy-type things, just so she can say, “Yes, of course, when I was in City I did The Thing That City Is Known For” when people ask.
Listen. This is my best friend. She is probably still going to be my best friend even if she has a boring time here, even if she hates my cooking, even if hanging out with an intensely enthusiastic eleven-year-old drives her bonkers. I KNOW THIS.
Here’s why I am fretting: We have never spent this much time one-on-one together! In fact, the bulk of our relationship has taken place via phone. We used to see each other regularly once or twice a year, but I haven’t seen her in two years now, and before that it had been about a decade. Will we have enough to talk about? What if she gets annoyed with me???? Or sick of me??? Despite knowing each other for a million years, we are fairly new at voicing our needs with one another, so I am a little afraid she will just agree to whatever I suggest even if it doesn’t sound good or fun to her. Also, I am a little shy about her seeing me in Mom Mode, which sounds silly even as I’m writing it, but… the shyness is still there. She’s only met Carla once, and for a very short time, and I don’t know, it just feels weird to be this whole other person than I was when we grew up together.
Also, I have asked her some questions like if there are any foods she hates/won’t eat, but my knowledge of her likes and dislikes mainly comes from high school. It’s kind of amazing how LITTLE you can know about the day-to-day life and habits of someone you love very much.
I am EXCITED, and I trust that it will be okay. But still, underneath all the happy anticipation is a little trepidation.
My Garden Continues to Delight: Let’s move on to LESS STRESSFUL THINGS, shall we? My garden is still producing flowers and I am loving it. The hydrangea bushes are scaling back, but we have several hydrangea trees that are in bloom and they are SO pretty. We also have an abundance of coneflowers, which are not my favorite flower, but which look quite stunning in a big bunch. The hibiscus are blooming as well, and they are ALSO not my favorite flower (and wayyyyy too big and unwieldy to cut and display in a vase), but they are pretty and a nice vivid red. Now I just need the garden to continue to look gorgeous for a little longer so my friend can enjoy it.
Who Recommended These Shoes? Because I LOVE Them: My plantar fasciitis is pretty well controlled these days, thank goodness, and I attribute that to regular shoe-wearing in the house. Usually I wear sneakers, but I have been wanting to try out some flip flops because I hate wearing socks, and it is a pain to tie and untie my sneakers all day long. I’ve had this pair of flip flops in my amazon cart for AGES, and I am pretty sure someone told me they were amazing which is why I added them to my cart. But I only just bought them in the past few weeks, and I love them so much. If you were the one who recommended them: THANK YOU.
They are much cuter than I expected; I guess I thought because they are “orthotic” that they would automatically be clunky and ugly, and they are not. Best of all, they are SO COMFORTABLE. I am getting a second pair to wear outside of the house because I love them so much. (Also, they are $30 right now, down from $50, so if you are looking for magic flip flops, this is a good time to go for it!)
How to Eat a Cucumber: There is just no way to write this bullet point that doesn’t sound like a euphemism, but please trust that I am looking for RECIPE IDEAS.
My husband brought home a cucumber one of his colleagues brought home from work. I am looking for creative ways to prepare this cucumber for consumption. (I don’t really like cucumbers.) I could make a big Greek salad, which I enjoy. But it is QUITE a large cucumber, and also I feel like that’s a little boring??? Maybe I should make this green goddess cucumber salad? Or this creamy cucumber salad? Or this smashed chili-soy cucumber salad? What’s your favorite cucumber recipe?
The Fall Birthday Procession Cometh: Okay I guess we’re back to fretting. ALL THE BIRTHDAYS are coming up in September and October and I am wholly unprepared and have no idea what to get anyone. My brother and his wife are typically very “no gifts, thanks” kind of people, but I would love to get them something little if possible. (They are both outdoorsy, they have a cat.) My sister-in-law and mother-in-law are always baffling, from a What to Give Them perspective. My friend who is visiting will have just had a birthday when she arrives, so I kind of want to have something here for her. (She is a runner and an avid gardener. I am thinking something garden-y? We don’t usually give each other presents, so I have no idea what she might want or need!) My husband’s birthday is also coming up! I have NO IDEA AT ALL what to give him! My mind is a complete blank. The only things that I know he has been looking at buying are a) a new external hard drive, which is a useful but way-too-boring gift, and plus I would need him to give me the exact specifications of the one he wants which would spoil whatever level of “surprise” goes along with “I got you an external hard drive for your birthday,” or b) a new travel backpack, but that again seems like something he’d really want to choose for himself. I guess it’s more exciting than a hard drive, but that’s not really saying much, is it?
Help???? Do you have any idea, based on the Very Limited Information I have shared about all of these complete strangers to you, what should I get them???? I am so bad at gift giving, and this year I feel especially useless.
And all these birthdays are right before CHRISTMAS, so there will need to be gifts for all of these people – and more! – again, and ugh.
Okay, Internet. That’s all I have for you today. Shoe recommendations and flower brags and double entendres and tons of random fretting. Hope you have a glorious weekend!
