Channeling My Inner Martha Stewart

This past week, A was in the school musical, and because it really takes a village to put on a show like this, parents were asked to help out. Of course, they came out in droves, and we jumped into the fray (always happy to help out). In addition to helping watch over the kids and prevent them from being too unruly, we also volunteered to make cupcakes for the bake sale. What would Martha have said?

The day was promising to be a crazy one, because as usual, we had many things on our plate. No hockey, however, which is a bummer for me personally, but hey, you can’t have it all, right?

Now I’ve mentioned this in the past, but the drama schedule was pretty hectic. They worked all winter, and then as the show approached, they started rehearsing every day and then did 5-6 hour days. Hardcore. On the days of the show, they were there for upwards of 8 hours! This, however, simplified things for me, because all I had to do was prepare a lunch, drop her off, and then be back for showtime.

During our 8 hours of free time, we had things to do. First off, we had to get the baking done, because that was a priority. There was the standard 5 loaves of flax/raisin bread that R and I eat every day, then we had to make cupcakes, the more the better. We only have one cupcake pan, so it slows things up considerably. We ended up making about 40 of them, which we left to cool with the bread. We also (I use the term “we” liberally) had to have supper ready because by the time we got home, we had to eat and then go to the show.

It was also really warm, so we couldn’t eat winter food like soup or stew, so we made a warm weather dish, pasta with garlic/anchovy sauce. It’s interesting, but we are a family of anchovy lovers. Not too many kids like salty fishy-fish, and I attribute our kids love for it to all the traveling they’ve done.

Anyway, once the food was ready, we had to jet over to LaValley’s to do real man’s work. We are in the process of finishing the barn, and need to get doorknobs, but as I’ve mentioned, the number of choices is overwhelming at Home Depot. I decided to try LaValley’s, instead, and it seemed to work out better. H was there, and he’s the nicest, most helpful guy there. I made some selections, he wrote up the order, and all I needed was R’s seal of approval.

Since we were in W. Leb, we noticed that the driving range was open, so we couldn’t pass up the chance to hit a few golf balls. We got a large bucket and N and I had a blast. I’m not a big golfer (I just play one on TV), but I sure do enjoy going to the driving range. Plus, I get a huge kick out of watching N swinging away. We saw his old coach there, and he gave us a quick refresher course to help our game.

After all that, we headed home but still had to decorate the cupcakes. For this, we needed powdered sugar, so we stopped at the market, got the sugar, made the frosting, and decorated. By then, mom got home, we ate supper, then jetted over to the school to see A perform. We were late, in fact, I think we were the last ones in the door, and ended up sitting way back in the rafters. This wasn’t a big deal, because we had killer, second row seats for Saturday’s show.

We got home really late, but it was a long but fun day, and it’s always nice to channel your inner Martha Stewart now and then, especially when it’s juxtaposed with real man’s work like building a barn. Besides, even though real men might disparage domestic work like cooking, baking and child-rearing, I’ll tell you this - it’s hard work. Hard enough to bring a real man to his knees. I’ve seen this firsthand, so give Martha some credit, except, of course, in the child-rearing department.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to miniature.rhino for the pic.