illness

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Grump Update, Cat Trauma, Holidays, Dinners This Week

Let’s see. I have quite possibly gotten over my end-of-summer crankiness (although I reserve the right to revert at any time). Maybe I am even, a teeny tiny bit, getting into the idea of fall???? My kid is feeling better. My husband is now sick. I have a scratchy throat and am wondering why I thought having covid would be protective against whatever non-covid illness Carla had. 

What else? The cat had a traumatic experience: my husband accidentally set off the burglar alarm when he left the house the other day, and no one was home. This reminds me of the time when my housekeeper accidentally set off the burglar alarm while I was dropping Carla off at school. I had no idea until the alarm company called to ask me what was up. When I got home, ten-ish minutes later, our poor sweet housekeeper was still shaking. And she was a HUMAN who presumably understood what was going on. The cat is a CAT and, based on the blank but searching stare he gives me whenever I try to talk to him, he does not understand a lick of English. Carla and I came home to the cat hiding under my bed, which seems to have become his Place of Refuge. (My husband accidentally knocked over a chair the cat was sitting on while Carla and I were out of town, and the cat sought Refuge under our bed and my husband endured several worried hours where the cat remained entrenched under the bed; he had to resort to poking him with a broom.) No one can reach him under the bed unless a broom is called to service; very safe. Carla sat in my room with him, tempting him with treats, for three hours until he decided to grace her with his presence. He seems fine now. 

I would like to make a change to how we celebrate holidays here in the United States (and possibly elsewhere; I know nothing). Instead of celebrating holidays on a specific date, I want to switch to celebrating holidays on the nearest Monday or Friday to that particular holiday. You know – the way we do Election Day on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November or Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. These are imperfect examples, though, because they are Tuesdays and Thursdays and I want ALL HOLIDAYS to take place on Monday or Friday. That way, we can avoid having a random Tuesday off (I’m looking at you this year, Rosh Hashanah), which messes up my entire week. Listen, I really hope I am not being wildly insensitive to religious tradition by making this suggestion. I am banking on it being the tradition that counts, and not necessarily the specific date. I mean, Easter always falls on a Sunday, right? Couldn’t the work-restricted portions of Yom Kippur and Christmas and Ramadan and Passover and Eid all fall on a Friday or a Monday? Please? More long weekends and fewer random mid-week days off. If you are or know someone who can arrange this, I assume you will get right on it. 

Speaking of Rosh Hashanah, which I was, briefly, this Apple Honey Cake is calling my name. Alas, a person can not live by apple honey cake alone. What else can I make this week?

Dinners for the Week of September 22-29

  • Chicken Noodle Soup: I am making a big pot of this for a loved one who is having surgery. The recipe makes a TON of soup, so I am going to withhold enough for me and my husband to eat for dinner one night. I don’t really like chicken noodle soup (and somehow I always misspell “noodle” as “noddle” which is irritating), but my mom swears by its healing powers, so why not enjoy some of whatever benefits it confers?

Oh! We are having out-of-town friends visit this coming weekend! That is super exciting. No idea what I will feed them, but I choose to leave that for Future Suzanne to deal with. 

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Dinners This Week, Sick Food, Fall Crankiness

Of course, Carla ended up getting sick last week, so all my dinner plans went right out the window. (She is fine now, and also it was neither covid nor strep.) 

Should I even MAKE dinner plans this week? 

Well. I have a few things I can salvage from last week, and a few other ideas. 

Dinners for the Week of September 15-21

Okay. So there’s that sorted. 

Clearly, when someone gets sick around here, the dinner plans go straight out the window. I am very easy to throw off track, I guess. No, wait. I am super flexible when plans change. There, that’s more palatable. My husband and I just end up eating random stuff around the house – which can sometimes include cereal or yogurt. Carla had a pretty decent appetite despite her cold, so she ate things she normally eats (roasted salmon, chicken nuggets, meatballs, bagel with cream cheese). 

Whenever I’m sick, my mom suggests making chicken noodle soup. To her, that’s the ultimate sick food. 

I do remember eating Campbell’s chicken soup when I was a kid, and enjoying it. But as an adult, it doesn’t do anything for me. When I’m under the weather but still able to eat, I usually go for carbs: toast with butter, bagels with butter, baked potatoes with butter. 

Carla will not eat soup, full stop. For her, sick foods typically look like… popsicles. Otherwise, she eats pretty much what she always eats.

My husband likes a bowl of matzah ball soup when he’s feeling rotten. I do not know how to make matzah ball soup; fortunately, there are a few places I can get it as takeout. 

What do you eat when you’re sick? Do you find chicken noodle soup as restorative as my mom does?

In other news, it still feels like summer outside, but it looks like fall. The thing is, I am feeling Extremely Cranky about fall this year. I don’t even know why! I have such a bad attitude. This weekend, my husband and I spent an afternoon by and in the pool – it feels like one of our last opportunities to enjoy it, and the summer didn’t afford as many pool days as I’d hoped – and I tried to take in the beauty of the changing leaves and the scrubbed-clean sky. 

And yet I am so very grumpy. Some of the grouchiness seems to be related to the impending holidays, I think. My family has four birthdays coming up and Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah, and I am not looking forward to ANY of it. In fact, the other day I asked my husband if we could maybe tell the family that we aren’t doing gifts this year. We could get presents for Carla and my niece, I conceded. But no one else. I don’t know how that will go over, in a family that has Gift Giving as a love language. Who knows. Maybe the grumpiness will subside? 

I really wish I could just get over this feeling. Is there a way to turn things around? I’m being Actively Grateful, which is the only strategy I can think of. Maybe I just need to ride it out. 

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Seven for Saturday

Elisabeth is leading a daily practice of gratitude with her F.I.G. Collective this month, and I have been collecting my own moments of gratitude. Sometimes well after the fact, which is less effective in sustaining gratitude day to day. But we work with what we have.

Saturday, February 15:

Well, this day is a total mystery to me. I did not keep track of the things I was grateful for in the moment, so I have no idea what we did during the day at all. I didn’t write. I didn’t go for a walk until around three. I’m pretty sure we made salmon burgers for dinner and then watched Mockingjay, but I couldn’t swear to it. My moments of gratitude on this day go to long walks outdoors (I at least have evidence I did that, even if I don’t remember it) and cozy evenings with my family.

Photo by Carla, who loves the snow as much as I do.

Sunday, February 16:

Carla’s sports lesson was cancelled this weekend, so we got to sleep in! Then I wrote 2,700 words in my manuscript while plodding away on the treadmill. THEN Carla got invited to an impromptu sleepover, so my husband and I had an evening all to ourselves. We browsed furniture stores, sampled perfumes until our heads ached, scrapped our restaurant dinner plans and brought pizza home instead, and then watched Longlegs together. I am so grateful for time to do the things that are important to me, that Carla has a friend she adores, and that my husband and I enjoy one another’s company.

Monday, February 17:

This was President’s Day in the US, so Carla had the day off from school, which meant I was able to sleep in again! I had a wonderful remote writing session with a dear friend, wrote a little, and admired the fluffy snowflakes that drifted endlessly from the sky. Then I went to pick Carla up from her friend’s house, where I ended up chatting with the friend’s mom for a whole hour. On our drive home, Carla and I went to the grocery store – she needed more Eggo waffles – and I was able to get my week’s shopping out of the way, and the total cost was under $200. My throat was feeling a little scratchy and the weather was snowy and cold, so I made a big pot of Mulligatawny soup for dinner. To counterbalance my very reasonable grocery bill, I bought a few pairs of shoes to try on (and will only keep one pair, I swear); we have a trip coming up and I expect rainy weather and want comfortable, cute, stylish, and/or waterproof shoes to wear while walking around outside. I am grateful for the community of parents I belong to, for feeling so happy to have my kiddo around after her short absence, for being able to buy new shoes, and for warm soup on a wintry day.

Tuesday, February 18:

I slept terribly, woke up feeling crummy, and ended up canceling my hair appointment and a meetup with a friend I haven’t seen in ages. My main successes of the day were driving my kid to school and then making a big pot of chipotle chicken tortilla soup (except I made it without the chicken – I added two cans of black beans and a cup or so of frozen corn to bulk it up a bit). My mom always says chicken soup is the best cure for a cold, and, while I don’t really like traditional chicken noodle soup, this spicy soup was tasty and comforting and lasted me all week. This day made me very grateful to my hairdresser for finding another hair appointment for me in a few weeks, despite her jam-packed schedule and to my husband for picking up our child from school so I didn’t have to make another hour’s drive.

This is a cheating photo from long ago, but it IS of the correct soup.

Wednesday, February 19:

I woke up feeling rotten for a second day in a row, but it was okay because my husband was able to take Carla to school! Then I had a remote writing session with my local writing partner and churned out 1,800 words, and received a fun impromptu phone call from my childhood best friend. My husband has been such a superstar about driving Carla to and from school when it works out lately (mainly because she has an after school activity that ends right when he’s usually able to leave work), and I am so grateful to him for understanding what a slog it is for me to drive two hours a day and offering to help when he can. I am also grateful to my brain for working even when my body feels like a rusty trash can, and to my writing friend for encouraging us to get together even though we couldn’t meet in person. I am extra grateful that my long distance friend and I are still so close.

Thursday, February 20:

I was feeling well enough to go outside and take a walk, and it was so wonderful to be outside with snowflakes cooling my face. I am so grateful that this illness was short-lived and that I live in such a beautiful place and that the temperatures are warm enough in my area for me to enjoy being outdoors. I am also grateful for Carla. I feel like I spend less and less time with her as she gets older, but this night we all ate dinner together and she urged us to make lists of Things to Do Before We Get a Cat and Things to Get for the Cat and then she made some google slides of potential cat names and it was so charming and adorable I ended up letting her stay up way past her bedtime. (If you have a cat, is there ONE ESSENTIAL THING that you are so glad you purchased for him/her?)

I am 95% certain that my parents’ cat required maybe five things on this list.

Friday, February 21:

After I dropped Carla off at school, I had another remote writing session with my local friend. (Even though I felt mostly better, I didn’t want to risk exposing her to my germs.) It wasn’t the most prolific writing day, but I did meet my daily word-count goal and, more important, I got some backstory that has been pre-occupying me out of my head and onto the page. Then I spent the rest of the day cleaning Carla’s craft room, closet, bedroom, and bathroom. This was difficult and frustrating for a lot of different reasons, the worst of which is that I kept feeling infuriated with Carla for being so messy and breaking the rules (the rule she has the most trouble with is no crafting outside of the craft room), and then immediately even more furious with myself because she is the kid and I am the parent and I should be more actively coaching her through how to keep her spaces clean instead of willingly allowing the mess to get out of control until it’s so overwhelming she can’t handle it herself. But: I am very grateful to my mom, who talked to me on the phone for more than an hour while I was cleaning, which distracted me from my anger and self-loathing and caught me up on what’s going on in her life. I am grateful that I made noticeable progress against the mess AND found my favorite sweatshirt, which has been missing for months. I am grateful that I was able to take a quick walk outside around five pm and release my frustration into the crisp winter air, and that it was still light enough for my walk, and that I conversed briefly with a robin who wanted to inform me spring is on the way (along with a new round of Attack Robin issues, I’m sure, but let’s not dwell on that when we’re busy being grateful). I am grateful that Carla had an after-school event that meant my husband and I could have another date night (second in a week!!!) (this time we went to an Indian restaurant and then went to Target and Home Depot) (we are experts at romance). I am also grateful that we now own four giant storage bins in which to store all of the toys cluttering up Carla’s space.

Trash/donations from the craft room declutter. That bear has seen some things.

My life is full of blessings, and I am very grateful for all of them, big and small, the unexpected gifts and those I normally take for granted.