Sometimes life can be so cruel.
This past weekend, Griffin and I dropped my son Trevor off at Norwich University in Vermont to being his sophomore year.
Have a good year at Norwich sweetheart.
Was that the cruel part of life? Not at all, when your chicks get older, and you’ve seen that they’ve learned the lessons you wanted them to learn, mama hens, (although a little sad) actually rejoice when their chicks leave the nest (as long as they come home for Christmas.)
After we dropped him off, I decided to stop at the King Arthur Flour bakery, café, and store. I had never gone but had heard many, many good things about it. Let’s just say that the store, which carries everything you’d ever need for baking, was like an adult candy counter. I’ll have one of those and one of those and ….
I’ve always made sure my kids understand that this mama hen is also a professional woman with a job. I contribute more to society than just raising the flock (although granted, that’s an important part.) It’s been important that my kids see me (and other women) as something more than just a “mommy” who takes care of them. Well, all of that training flew out the window, when my boys saw me flit from one cake pan to another. I think I may have actually squealed with delight on several occasions.
Mom candy
The boys equated the entire experience to the plot-line of the movie, The Bodysnatchers. Who are you and what have you done with our mom?
Was that the cruel part? Oh no, absolutely not, but hold on, because here it comes.
On Sunday morning so that I could use some of my new baking tools, I got up early to make everyone some peach scones. Surprisingly, they ended up being a tiny bit overcooked, oh well, I thought, I must have lost track of the time.
Then at dinner when I was cooking the chicken, Logan came into the kitchen and asked me why I was cooking it at 130 degrees. Huh? I set the oven to 375 but it kept returning to 130 and wouldn’t get any higher. Something was wrong with our oven.
What do you do when your laptop starts acting up? You reboot, right?
I turned the 3 hour cleaner option on for our stove and we sat down to dinner (we ended up using the grill to cook the chicken.)
“Hey mom, is the stove supposed to be this hot?” Griffin asked me as he sucked on his finger that he had burned on the surface of the stove.
Yup, our stove was well on its way to a literal meltdown. I’ve had parts of an oven fall or break off, but I’ve never had a stove that went haywire with the intent to start a house fire (it didn’t but if we hadn’t been right there, there was a pretty good chance it could have.)
So not only is our stove unplugged but it’s breaker has been flipped to make sure that absolutely no electricity is getting into that beast. It’s an old stove, we will probably look into getting a new one.
And now here’s the cruelness of life.
It’s not that we need a new stove, life happens, this is what you expect when you have a house and you use your appliances to death (with 6 kids, we’re on our third washer.) The cruel part is that I have 3 bags of brand new baking supplies and tools sitting on a table in my dining room, rolling their eyes and mocking my inability to even throw a batch of apple-cheddar muffins together.
*sigh*
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
Also, join me on Facebook to find out more about the flock (children and chickens) and see some pretty funny chicken jokes, photos of tiny houses, and even a recipe or two.
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