Shrimp, cherries, a very good article

T and I have been burning.the.candle y'all, just burning away at both ends. Yo! I am what's called tuckered out. He is in bed right now. Not even kidding. Oliver spent the night with a friend last night which seemed like a big deal to everyone except him. For god's sakes, Jack has never even had a sleepover. Second children for you! He had an absolute ball. I mean, it was a homerun of a sleepover, and I say hat's off to friend E's family. He is completely wiped out now, naturally, and is vacillating between bliss and batshit. Cue the early bedtime music. I think J-bird needs to go in that direction too. He ate an entire(!) order of 2Amy's meatballs + bread + an ice cream sundae last night before bathing and then asking for another meal. We watched a movie and this morning went to the farmers market. He has been eating ever since and is gaga because his mind is a hamster wheel on speed. Our family is positively abuzz, people. Last night, Tom made me dinner: shrimp and grits, and it definitely hit the spot. He made shrimp stock from the shells, used sherry and butter, the works. He did manage to dirty ever pot and bowl we own, but bygones; he cooked for moi!

I was extremely pleased to find sour cherries at the FM this morning and bought three quarts which I've just finished pitting. Some are already freezing; the rest will be made into a pie sometime very soon. Sour cherry pie is an absolute highlight of this time of year.

Lastly, I want to draw your attention to this article, The Trauma of Parenthood, published in this morning's NY Times. Though trauma is a heavy word, this piece is right and important, especially in its call to spread kindness not judgment towards parents. The easy or blissful time you might be experiencing may be something someone else only feels fleetingly, and a lack of support for their tougher times only serves to make them feel judged, lonely, guilty and/or other negative things. I emailed the author, Eli Finkel, to say thank you, and he emailed me right back. Turns out we were a year apart at Northwestern, where he is a professor now. Very cool!

Ludicrous Wednesdays

Wednesdays have become the most outrageous day, and not in a good way (although I did manage a lunch date with a bestie today). They are so run-raggedy that Thursdays have defaulted into necessary mental health days. You know, the times you call in sick from work when you're not really sick or clear your schedule just because you literally cannot even feign interest in one more activity or to-do. And so tomorrow is such for me, and I am seriously looking forward to it. I will read the newspaper, I will not answer any calls from CVS, and I will finish unpacking from Richmond. We got home at 6:15 tonight, and the boys still needed dinner, bath and the bedtime routine. I urged them to snarf dinner like mannerless heathens, raced them through shoddy baths, read one joint story, Snoring Beauty, and then I bid them sayonara before going to sit catatonically with Nutmeg and online shop for god knows what until returning to some sort of stasis. At this point, Jack came downstairs (when did "bedtime" become like a yellow traffic light instead of red?) needing a yellow marker to color in the bubble lettered-Pokemon title he'd drawn on a Pokemon notebook he was making and also a brown to complete something else.

I accommodated these requests and certainly agreed when he then asked if he could do a page in his reading comprehension workbook (smart kid buys time in ways he knows I'll agree to); you have never seen a child write such lengthy and complete answers. I did not agree to a second dinner or his "real need" to "look something up on Amazon." I can't tell y'all how much rogue shit Tom and I found in our Amazon cart on a weekly basis. Reason 408 why I will never share passwords with the children! Can you imagine what would start arriving at our door?

Ultimately, I took a cue from my friend Randy, who regularly and very kindly beseeches me to take a load off, and decided we'd have salad and leftover gumbo for dinner. Because it's been more than a week, I also had to make a plum tart. Duh!

Lest y'all think my crush on Benedict has waned, it has not. It has been on the back burner as of crazy late, but I have colored in my coloring book and I do still gaze upon this picture on occasion. Know you've missed it too (except C and Mom; I know he mos def does NOT do it for you. We can still be friends.)

Children cussing, gumbo making

I'm still cringe-laughing because, as is true for much of parenthood, you just can't make this shit up. You see, in Spanish club last term, Oliver developed a big, mutual crush on a 4th grader, P, who was assisting the teacher. I know the girl's mother pretty well so offered up that if ever her daughter wanted to play or get babysitting experience, I'd be happy to have her over as a "mother's helper."  Ol kept asking, the dear girl felt equally enthused, and so yesterday P came over for two hours after the boys returned home from camp.

Though Jack ultimately left Ol and P to themselves, initially the three played several rounds of Spanish bingo. Approximately 22 minutes after P arrived, I was making roux in the kitchen and thinking to myself, "this is just a lovely situation!" when I heard Jack yell down, "Mom, Oliver just said the "f-word."

"WTF?!" I said to myself.

"Excuse me, what f-word?" hoping beyond hope that the answer was 'fart.'

Jack: "The bad one."

Oliver: "Fuck! Isn't that a Spanish word?"

People, I'm wracking my brain and can think of no Spanish word that sounds like 'fuck.' I suspect Oliver is quick on his feet in the BS department rather than honestly thinking fuck is a Spanish vocab word he learned, and I'll give him that, but good god. 22 minutes in?

In as calm a voice as I could muster through mortification and under-my-breath laughing, I reminded Oliver that what he said was really quite a bad word and that he would not be repeating it. I then texted a friend because this story had to be shared immediately. She was in the pit of hell with her tykes and seemed to appreciate comic relief.

"OK, Mom."

Naturally, I let P's mother know, as soon as she arrived, that should P mention that my five year old said 'fuck' during Spanish bingo, I really didn't know where this came from and had handled it. She laughed, I laughed, say it with me: "You can't make this shit up."

Fortunately, this cussing did not interfere deleteriously with my roux-making, a good thing since making roux on a hot day is fairly arduous and you'd always prefer to not make a second batch unless you have or want to. By the time we ate, it was actually really nice out, so T and I moved to the deck with steaming bowls of gumbo. Gumbo is one of my favorite dishes of all time. I love it so much. It is highbrow, lowbrow, home, comfort and spice all in a bowl.

I spent two hours with my dear friend, G, this morning and am now making Strawberry Pinot Noir jam. Back to it!