This past weekend was one day too long. Normally, I really like a three day weekend. I like the freedom of no set schedule, especially in the cold winter months. It's an easy excuse to stay in, wrap up tight in blankets, and watch movies. I always feel guilty being indoors when the sun is out. But when the temperature dips below 30 degrees, the guilt vanishes.
This weekend was long though. All the girls were really starting to get on my nerves, and so was David. I love them, I do, but by day 3 I am kind of done. I like to get up and have my coffee, and sit and check email etc.. and when he is here, guess who is sitting in my usual coffee drinking, email checking, spot? You guessed it. And I have to wait my turn. I do try and hide my irritation, but after a while, I just sort of give up.
Money is in real short supplies this week, and a few things, which I won't bore you about here, reared their ugly heads this weekend, and caused my stress level to go beyond it's usual simmer, to an all out boil over. I simply felt consumed with worry and stress. I found every conversation between the girls and I, was them talking, and me half listening. David was stressed as well, and when we both are in similar mindsets, it just never really works. We have never come together during stress. Instead, we separate. Believe me, I know this is awful. "In good times and bad", right? But it isn't always that easy.
To get my mind off of things, I threw myself into making a turkey dinner Sunday night. David had gotten a free turkey at Christmas time at work. It had been sitting in the freezer, and I pulled it out last week, envisioning a cozy Sunday night turkey dinner, complete with all the trimmings. It all was going along smoothly, actually. I had made my own stuffing, and mashed potatoes. The gravy was almost done, and the broccoli was roasting in the oven. I was even spooning the cranberry sauce into a bowl, when David started cleaning the roasting pan. When he went to put it back on it's shelf, beneath our butcher block, there was an incredible crash. I knew what it was before I even turned around.
Sharing that shelf with the roasting pan, were a stack of bowls that I loved, nestled into a wooden salad bowl. One of those bowls was my Nanny's glass Pyrex bowl. I loved that bowl. After she had died, I took it from her house before it was emptied. The house had been sold, and whatever was left that my Mom and her sister didn't remove, was garbage. The bowl was scratched. You could tell it was an electric mixer that had left the damage, most likely preparing the chocolate mousse Nanny brought to every holiday, no matter if my mom insisted her not bring a thing. She always brought it along. I can still see her walking up the brick walk to the door, cigarette dangling from her lips, and glasses on the end of her nose, clutching that glass bowl, covered in layers upon layers of tin foil.
I loved serving things out of that bowl, and often wondered when my Nanny had gotten it. But there it was, shattered into a million pieces, some as small as a grain of sand, all over the slate kitchen floor. I backed up, and bumped right into a large glass of water I had been drinking, and that hit the floor. My gravy started to bubble up, and I could smell the broccoli beginning to burn. David yelled for everyone to get away, and was cursing under his breath. In that moment, I wanted to throw the pot of gravy into the sink, and run out of the room. The bowl, my Nanny's bowl, was gone. A little piece of her.
Stress can really get to you. It can turn the minutia of the day, into a fever pitch that it doesn't need to be. That one accident caused me to snap. I was mad. I was tired of set back after set back, after working so hard, and once again, moving three steps back. It wasn't the bowl. And the dinner wasn't all that great. It was everything coming back to me in a rush, and there it was, piled on the kitchen floor in a jagged heap.
Some days, doing something normal, and trying to push worries aside to just enjoy a Sunday meal can prove futile. Some days, all it takes is Nanny's chocolate mousse bowl to turn to dust on the floor, to snap you back into your worries.
After dinner, Molly climbed up on my lap, and cupped my face in her tiny hands, and said, "Are you OK Mommy?" I smiled and said I was.
I have to be, right?
This weekend was long though. All the girls were really starting to get on my nerves, and so was David. I love them, I do, but by day 3 I am kind of done. I like to get up and have my coffee, and sit and check email etc.. and when he is here, guess who is sitting in my usual coffee drinking, email checking, spot? You guessed it. And I have to wait my turn. I do try and hide my irritation, but after a while, I just sort of give up.
Money is in real short supplies this week, and a few things, which I won't bore you about here, reared their ugly heads this weekend, and caused my stress level to go beyond it's usual simmer, to an all out boil over. I simply felt consumed with worry and stress. I found every conversation between the girls and I, was them talking, and me half listening. David was stressed as well, and when we both are in similar mindsets, it just never really works. We have never come together during stress. Instead, we separate. Believe me, I know this is awful. "In good times and bad", right? But it isn't always that easy.
To get my mind off of things, I threw myself into making a turkey dinner Sunday night. David had gotten a free turkey at Christmas time at work. It had been sitting in the freezer, and I pulled it out last week, envisioning a cozy Sunday night turkey dinner, complete with all the trimmings. It all was going along smoothly, actually. I had made my own stuffing, and mashed potatoes. The gravy was almost done, and the broccoli was roasting in the oven. I was even spooning the cranberry sauce into a bowl, when David started cleaning the roasting pan. When he went to put it back on it's shelf, beneath our butcher block, there was an incredible crash. I knew what it was before I even turned around.
Sharing that shelf with the roasting pan, were a stack of bowls that I loved, nestled into a wooden salad bowl. One of those bowls was my Nanny's glass Pyrex bowl. I loved that bowl. After she had died, I took it from her house before it was emptied. The house had been sold, and whatever was left that my Mom and her sister didn't remove, was garbage. The bowl was scratched. You could tell it was an electric mixer that had left the damage, most likely preparing the chocolate mousse Nanny brought to every holiday, no matter if my mom insisted her not bring a thing. She always brought it along. I can still see her walking up the brick walk to the door, cigarette dangling from her lips, and glasses on the end of her nose, clutching that glass bowl, covered in layers upon layers of tin foil.
I loved serving things out of that bowl, and often wondered when my Nanny had gotten it. But there it was, shattered into a million pieces, some as small as a grain of sand, all over the slate kitchen floor. I backed up, and bumped right into a large glass of water I had been drinking, and that hit the floor. My gravy started to bubble up, and I could smell the broccoli beginning to burn. David yelled for everyone to get away, and was cursing under his breath. In that moment, I wanted to throw the pot of gravy into the sink, and run out of the room. The bowl, my Nanny's bowl, was gone. A little piece of her.
Stress can really get to you. It can turn the minutia of the day, into a fever pitch that it doesn't need to be. That one accident caused me to snap. I was mad. I was tired of set back after set back, after working so hard, and once again, moving three steps back. It wasn't the bowl. And the dinner wasn't all that great. It was everything coming back to me in a rush, and there it was, piled on the kitchen floor in a jagged heap.
Some days, doing something normal, and trying to push worries aside to just enjoy a Sunday meal can prove futile. Some days, all it takes is Nanny's chocolate mousse bowl to turn to dust on the floor, to snap you back into your worries.
After dinner, Molly climbed up on my lap, and cupped my face in her tiny hands, and said, "Are you OK Mommy?" I smiled and said I was.
I have to be, right?
I'm sorry. I hate when everything just seems to be conspiring against you. It's so hard to get through, and get past.
ReplyDeleteAnd btw, I have one of those bowls, too. It's not a Pyrex bowl, but it is a glass bowl that my grandmother used for mashed potatoes. It's also all scratched on the inside, and there's even a chip around the edge. Sometimes I wonder if using it will break it. Maybe it'll be dropped. Maybe the glass is weak and will give way. But I still use it, because I think of her everytime I do. I hope it doesn't break, but maybe someday it will. And I'll be sad. But the bowl doesn't hold the memory, my mind does.