Valentine's Day Approaches

Valentine's Day is nearly upon us and with it comes the special combination of anxiety and neuroticism that makes me uniquely me. As if my general fears of the day aren't enough, I am now finding myself contemplating what illness or accident will land me another romantic evening in the Emergency Room.

I'm so glad that my kids have not inherited my Valentine's craziness. They seem pretty cool and matter-of-fact about it. There's no anxiety about giving a valentine to the weird kid or people thinking that they like the weird kid. I guess that's a plus to today's school system. They really emphasize that every kid in the class is "one of our friends." That wasn't the case when I was growing up. There was a definite stigma associated with being friends with some kids. Was it fair? No. Did I want to exclude people? No. But when you're a kid with thick glasses, freckles and really messed up teeth, you can't take any chances giving a Valentine to the smelly kid. Childhood was really rough for me.

We actually have the opportunity to have a grown-up night out this year. Our church’s Married Couples Group is sponsoring a romantic evening of dinner and entertainment. It's reasonably priced, but we can't make it for a few reasons, which coincidentally is the exact number of children we have. When you have three kids and not a single one of them is old enough to stay home alone or watch any of the others, you spend a lot of Valentine's Days eating chicken nuggets and watching Curious George.

We could hire our niece to babysit. She's done it before and did a great job. She's responsible, organized, and really prepared. She's much more prepared than I ever was when I used to babysit kids. She brings toys, prizes, candy and activities. But that's not really the problem either.

My parents are going to the Married Couples Valentine's Dinner. I suppose this isn't really that big of a deal. But personally, I find it really difficult to look deeply into my love's eyes while my Dad is asking me to pass the salt.

And here's Robert Downy, Jr., just because he makes everything better. 

It's How Dinner Is Done!

I set off the smoke detector while making dinner tonight.  This used to be a fairly regular occurrance in my house growing up.  In fact, we used to tease my Mother and joke that dinner wasn't done until the smoke detector went off.  It hasn't happened to me personally in quite a while and, even though only my kids witnessed me looking like a buffoon, it was pretty embarrassing.  This is clearly one of those moments my Mom warned me about when she said, "Just wait until you <fill in the blank>," and I know she is reading this with a contented smile on her face.

I've been making my own bread for the past month or so because I've become frustrated at paying nearly $3 for a loaf of bread that is half gone after one lunch with my kids.  I've been pretty successful with the bread so for dinner tonight I decided to move on to pizza crust.  I even have a pizza stone that I have never actually used but is carefully wrapped in a kitchen towel in the bottom of my cabinet.  I pulled out the instructions that came with the stone and it recommended sprinkling corn meal on it to keep the pizza from sticking and warming it up on the bottom rack of the oven. 

This was bad advice, but not right away.  At first there was a very pleasant smell that made my kids run into the kitchen and yell, "What's for dinner?"  About two minutes after that, black smoke started rolling out of the oven and the smoke detector started to wail.  I pulled out the stone and dumped the ashes of corn meal into the sink while I frantically turned on fans and opened windows.  All the while, my kids were yelling, "Stay low and go!!  Stay low and go!!"  After opening the front door they all clamored out onto the porch and were grabbing at my shirt as I went back into the house.  "Don't go back in, Mama!"

I grabbed the thickest magazine that was nearby, Wegman's Menu, and began furiously waving it at the smoke detector.  "It's okay, kids!  Just a little smoke!"  I tried to assure them.  After a few minutes the smoke cleared and I was finally able to convince the kids to come back inside the house.

At least I know they remembered the fire safety rules from the State Fair.