The Essence

Living and growing a family in the North awards you with a real and tangible connection to the land. As a mother of 5 and as a home baker and wannabe chef, it is this connection that seeps into everything - motherhood, food, harvesting, and experiencing the very heartbeat of the bit of earth that sustains us.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Sweet Satisfaction


Sometimes I have pretty unproductive days, not the laying on the couch all day channel surfing days of my adolescence, those are long gone, but the kind of days where I go round and round with no real enthusiasm for the monotony of housewife life. Then there are days like today, when I finally have a chance to sit down and breathe while I listen to June sing herself to sleep, I marvel at all the things I got done. It probably had something to do with the good sleep I had last night, as June only woke up once and was back asleep with a quick "shhhhhhhhhh", Lydia did not wake up screaming that someone ate all the yogurt, and Emily didn't have a tummy ache. (Or an eye ache or knee ache or neck ache, Emily seems to like to ache these days.) This morning when the alarm went off I was up out of bed, I didn't hit the sleep button even once. I made myself some coffee, turned on Alan Jackson and made french toast and eggs and smoothies for breakfast. I got the kids off to school on time and welcomed the 3 preschoolers I care for all by the stroke of 9. We made playdoh and played playdoh, put together a snack for playgroup at the Recreation Center, and I got everyone's coats, hats, mitts and boots on and everyone into their carseats by 10:30. I then swung by my friends house to pick up her kid, because as I was sipping my morning coffee I read her blog that she posted at 4 in the morning while up with her crazy wide awake-way-too-early children, and I could literally see the tears rolling down the screen of my computer. I thought to myself, "what could be the difference between 5 and 6?, besides, now she owes ME a favor!" After playgroup we cruised by the school (actually I just had to back up the van and move it about 3 meters into the school parking lot) to pick up Dustin and Emily, the former of who had to ride in the back hatch as there were no more seats left. After dropping the friends kid off, we headed home for soup and sandwiches. I organize a program in Faro I've dubbed Friendship Feasts, kind of lame but totally awesome. It's kind of like a meals on wheels. After lunch as I was reading "If you give a pig a party" for the upteemth time, I realized that it was my day to cook 2 families meals. Instead of letting things unravel, as they so easily could have, I ran down to the freezer and grabbed a few packs of ground moose meat. I put down my sleepers for their naps, which left me 3, and I explained to them that today for craft we were making Shepherds Pie. They seemed O.K with that and we got started peeling potatoes and chopping carrots and onions. Lydia eyes even watered, and she laughed like crazy when I teased her, "Liddie, STOP crying!" They really liked whipping the potatoes with the Kitchen Aid, especially on the highest speed so potatoes splattered all over the wall. I got out the casseroles, everyone of course wanted their own, so that made four. Two for Friendship Feasts, one for us and one for my friend who is struggling with "my kids are turning me into a zombie" syndrome. The kids were a little irked at me when I told them they couldn't take their Shepherd's Pie's home to their mommies, but when I told them they could lick the potato bowl, strangely it made it all better. After a couple dreaded runs down the sledding hill again, everyone got picked up at 5, Lydia and Dustin headed out on the snowmobile and June and I loaded the van and started deliveries. This was the best part of the day, seeing everyone's grateful smiles as they cradled their warm casserole dishes, and the sweet satisfaction of knowing that today I made a difference. We went home to the quiet, June played while I cleaned the potato off the wall, we had a delicious supper and I started to get ready for aerobics class. Then exhaustion started to set in, and I totally caved to the call of my hot tub on my back deck. Oh well, I'll get fit on Thursday.

3 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for all of your help today! I really appreciated everything you did. I am now a well fed zombie!

    And it wasn't aerobics... it was weight training... I would kill for a hottub right now!

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  2. you are a crazy efficient superwoman

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