To say that I’ve been distracted lately would be an understatement. For nearly 2 weeks I’ve been dealing with a ‘stomach flu’ baby and all that entails. I’ve done so much laundry I’m not actually sure which direction I’m walking at any point in time. I forget where I’m going and why although a completely trashed (though reusable) cloth diaper was usually involved. Although typically every bit of nastiness is contained by cloth diapers, we occasionally dealt with the trifecta of 6 1/2 year old diapers with relaxed elastic, a baby that was losing weight daily and needed the rise snapped down again, and ‘stomach flu’– that’s all I’ll say about that.
Nothing was holding that all in 100% of the time.
With a lack of sleep and all the kids going through some version of this in the last couple of weeks (and having had it myself, too)— I was officially a mombie yesterday.
Mombie (n.)- a mom zombie. Also a mom who is so exhausted she is walking around as if she is seeking brains, typically to shove in her own head.
Shortly before my husband got home, the 6 year old distracted me during a diaper change, and I actually left the baby in an unsnapped onesie, and she happily ran around until I realized that she was scratching her belly, and oh… there’s NO DIAPER under there!
About an hour later, we’d taken turns keeping the older kids from killing each other, making homemade spaghetti sauce, and were ready to put the pasta in the water. I’d shifted pots around a bit, because we have a burner that doesn’t work as well, and as it failed me once again, I changed burners and completely forgot about it. Until a few minutes later when I had set the box of fetuccine straight up and down on top of it. I hurridly grabbed the box, turned to my husband and said, wow, the bottom is really hot, I’d forgotten that that burner was on.. I am glad it didn’t… and before I could say MELT THE GLUE…. you guessed it, the bottom of the box let go and the entire pound of thin strands hit the floor.
It had been such a bad day that I literally could not do anything other than laugh.
He painstakingly said nothing and picked up the pasta piece by piece off the floor, rinsed it, broke it, and put it in the pot. While I was nursing the little one, he cooked it. He’d promised to help someone do something in town, and he had just enough time to realize that no, he wasn’t getting anything to eat, because the pasta had clumped together when it rinsed and never broke apart, so it was giant gooey lumps of uncooked glop in the middle.
I rummaged and found 2 small pasta options and set about cooking a replacement while he left to help the person who needed it. Because one of the options was so small, I had to use our tea strainer to get the water out. I’m not entirely sure if it got clean in the dishwasher or not. It probably wasn’t supposed to go in the dishwasher. Ask me how much I care.
At any rate, we managed to have dinner, although at certain points, it is less of dinner and more of a bribe to get the kids to eat something so they can have one of the cookies they decorated earlier in the day. Since that’s a rare treat, and the day was so horrible, I chose to give them a small amount of food and let the cookie fill in the rest. They were happy, I didn’t have to argue with them while their dad was gone, and thankfully the baby has managed to have a diaper on thus far.
I know one thing, I’ll never put a box of pasta on the stove again.
Oh. My. I’ve had those days and the melted box! Hope everyone is feeling better and you can enjoy Easter.