In Which We Find a Pity Party

Most days, I am OK with it. Most days, I can focus on how much better I feel and how grateful I am for figuring out why I was feeling so lousy all the time. Most days, I think about how much better I eat now and how many new and wonderful recipes I have tried and all the new foods I have discovered like Quinoa. Today is not one of those days.

Fridays are a crazy kind of day at my house. Work, then home, then off to get the C.S.A. basket, then dinner and then errands. I used to do errands on Saturday morning, but it ended up eating half the day and I'm too fried on Friday nights to do much more than shop anyhow. A long time ago, when football games and field hockey became part of our normal routine, I instituted a "Friday night is an easy dinner" kind of rule. If it was complicated or took a lot of time, we weren't having it on a Friday.

Up for tonight, is "Grown Up Grilled Cheese" sandwiches and chips. Basically, someone thought of the great idea of merging BLT's and Grilled Cheese and that's what they called it. It is soooooooooooo good. In order for us to have it for dinner however, I need to make bread for my girl. Her soy allergy means 99% of all packaged bread products sold in the USA are off limits for her. So I make bread, and rolls, and waffles and pancakes and other such things. For her, and for them, because homemade is better and I love them.

I was fine this morning putting it all in the bread machine and hitting "GO" (on a delay timer). I was fine all day thinking about dinner and how mine was going to be on gluten free bread (not the greatest thing ever) with no bacon. Fine with all of it actually. Then my day got long, and my head started to hurt, and at the end of the day, I couldn't wait to get home.  I walked through the door and was hit with the smell of my most favorite bread baking in the machine. The warm, yummy, wheat-laden smell of the best bread I've ever made in my life. It's good stuff. I've made it so often I don't even need the recipe anymore. When my SIL couldn't have dairy over the summer, I made it into rolls for our 4th of July cookout. It is that good.

I put my school bag down, and my lunch box, and my water jug, and I walked out into the front room, far from the kitchen where the bread still had 15 more minutes to cook and stared out the front door. As I stood there, thinking of how much my head hurt and how tired I was and how it wasn't fair that I couldn't eat the same bread as the rest of my family tonight, I had to fight back the tears. In the grand scheme of life, I am very fortunate and I know that. Other people have it far worse than I do, and while I'm not happy about that, it helps to put it into perspective. But today, when I'm still not 100% over the viral infection that kicked my arse these past 2 weeks, and my head is pounding but my Neurologist hasn't called me back yet so we can switch my meds and I've realized that something in my school building is making me reactive while I'm at work... today I can't do it. So I'm going to put on my big girl pants during dinner and pretend that it's all fine and good, but inside the unfairness of it all is threatening to bury me alive.