Shoe Leather

I am unbelievably absent-minded when I am tired.  My house, desk, phone, and purse are littered with lists and appointments and Post-Its and notes to remind me to do things and sometimes they STILL don’t get done.  I’ve often wondered how Tony manages on so little sleep.  I also wonder why people insist on dropping off their tax information way into March when it’s pretty much guaranteed that their tax professional is living on coffee and a prayer.  Now, this is just speculation here, and I’m sure that Tony and his colleagues do a great job on tax returns no matter the day, but I think quality must be better the earlier you turn your stuff in.  You know, when the preparer is well-rested and less stressed.  They’re bound to appreciate you more, at the very least.

Last Tuesday, a day of school, work, the housekeeper coming (so I have to scramble to pick up ahead of time so she can get to the floors to clean them), gymnastics class, and my Y workout class, I forgot to plug the crockpot in.  Well, first I forgot to put the corned beef in the crockpot, but I put it in at noon.  Jamie came to work with me because he was still getting over having a bad case of the barfs on Sunday night (why must these things always happen in the middle of the night?), so we went home for lunch and a nap at noon.  I put the corned beef in the crockpot then, turned it on high, and forgot to plug it in.  Turns out it doesn’t work so well when it’s not plugged in (when, oh when, will appliances run on my desires alone?)  Three hours later, I realized my mistake.  Then I forgot that I had such an appliance as a pressure cooker even though my mom was just talking about cooking corned beef in a pressure cooker the day before.  Instead, I tried to cook it on the stovetop, which is a legitimate way to cook a corned beef if you can cook it all day.  However, I refuse to leave the stove on when I’m not at home, so I cooked it for an hour, turned it off, went to gymnastics, cooked it for another half hour, and left for my Y class.

Needless to say, it was as tough as shoe leather when Tony served it for dinner.  That’s kind of the point of corned beef, you know?  It’s a cheap, tough cut of beef that turns edible after hours and hours of slow cooking.  Except now it’s a novelty food served for Saint Patrick’s Day, a holiday that means next to nothing in our family, so it’s not so cheap.  Tony tried to make the kids eat it, regardless of how tough it was, and he’s too nice to say anything like “mom surely screwed this one up, you don’t have to eat it, I’ll make nachos.”  Or maybe he was just too tired to remember how to make nachos.  I wasn’t there to admit to everyone that I made a horrible mistake and we should just have nachos instead, so everybody cried, and Tony sent a paniced text around 7 stating simply, “everyone’s crying and they hate me.”  Been there, my love.

I won’t say all’s well that ends well because it really didn’t that night.  Dinner is not currently an area of success in our house.

At any rate, even without a note to remind me, I’ll probably remember these lessons: turn on the crockpot; remember your pressure cooker; nachos have the power to fix things only if you recognize them as a viable alternative.