Monthly Archives: November 2012

It seems there are some life lessons I need to learn many times before they will stick in my head.  Tonight brought another one home to me, because I was motivated by a burning need to make Chicken Cordon Bleu for dinner.

Thursdays around here are BBC days, which means driving Miss Hannah into Boston for her weekly chorus rehearsal. I pick her up as soon as school lets out and she is there until 6:30.  Needless to say, this makes the idea of cooking dinner a challenge.  Until today, I have been driving her into the city and staying in the parent waiting room for the two hours of rehearsal, telling myself that I liked the couple of hours of knitting time, with no other responsibilities.  Who doesn’t love those minutes they can carve out for themselves where they “have” to work on something they enjoy?  Especially compared to coming home and doing housework?

This week, I asked Wiley to pick her up and I came straight home, because I wanted to make dinner – I’d planned on making it on Monday and didn’t get to, and could not get the craving for it out of my head. So, even though I knew the non-stop round trip would be annoying, and the traffic going home would be worse at 4:15, I did it anyway.

And I had such a better evening.

Because I *love* spending two hours in the kitchen creating a meal, especially when I am alone and can just putter along at my own pace, without anyone getting in my way or needing my attention.  I put on some of my favorite music and sang along, loudly.  I cooked delicious dinner, cleaned up the kitchen and had time to deal with the vegetable delivery box.  If I compare that to how stressed out and awful another night of take out makes me feel, or how overwhelming I find the noisy waiting room before all the kids settle into their rehearsals, the extra 20 minutes it takes to get home seems downright fabulous.

But the funny thing is, I already KNEW this stuff.  I know how digging in to cooking always make me feel better, even after a crappy day.  I know I like having time to myself in the house.  I know I would rather do those things than make small talk with a bunch of near strangers for two hours.  If I know all these things, how did I manage to convince myself that I would feel put upon if I went home and “worked” for those hours instead of staying there and knitting?  Why did I do that?  I have a theory on that, and it’s neither smart, nor flattering, and has to do with bitterness over divisions of household labor in our house, despite the fact that such bitterness is largely unwarranted.

Maybe this time the lesson will stick.  I can tell you that Wiley will be taking over pick-up duty from here on out -and I’ll be heading home to cook delicious food.

And the Chicken Cordon Bleu was delicious – everything my taste buds had been hoping for.