And that is what my friday was like. It wasn’t a few things here or there, it was a continuous stream of “You have GOT to be kidding me.” Let’s tee it up with Thursday Night:
Friday we were having a bunch of friends over for dinner and I decided that it was time to actually pull together a “grown-up” dinner. You know, the ones where you plan a menu, set a table, and really think things through? My whole goal was to find dishes that I could pre-make so that I wasn’t stuck in the kitchen the whole night. After a few weeks of exploring, I landed on a Bruschetta Appetizer, the always scrumptious Jo Mama’s Spaghetti, Caesar Salad, Cheesy Bread, and a Pumpkin Cake Roll dessert. Okay, Thursday night:
I have been scrambling to find time to do everything, so I begged Grandma for a little help with getting a table cloth for our dining room table. When the table is fully extended, the only cloth I had was a dark green that was WAY more Christmas than fall. So Grandma saved the day picking up one for me on Thursday so that I could come home and prep the bruschetta, make the dessert, and wash all the lettuce for the caesar salad. I got home from work, started in on everything. The bruschetta came out great and I put it in the fridge to marinade overnight. The pumpkin roll was a different conversation though … got the cake baked, followed the instructions, however when I put the icing on it and started to roll, the cake was still way too hot, so the icing melted, smooshed out some, and the cake cracked a little bit close to the seam. I finished it up and put it in the fridge anyway and figured, “Eh, it was pretty easy to make, I will do another one tomorrow.” Then I ironed the 144×70 table cloth … which is ALWAYS a treat. Got the table cloth on, center piece set, then set the dishes out on the table with the linen napkins holding the silverware. Looked very nice … except … the table cloth was actually way too big and the color was … off.
Fast forward to Friday morning … I woke up to the sound of a bath being drawn – apparently Carter’s diaper leaked during the night and he was a mess. So Jeremy got him cleaned up and we all headed downstairs for our morning. Both Jeremy and I work at the kitchen table while Carter plays in the morning. Jeremy had to print something, so he headed up to the office and Carter was sitting in a chair that was right next to him at the table. (I was across from Carter) At one point I look up and Carter was crawling up onto the table – he grabbed Jeremy’s coffee cup (which is in the middle of the table that is at least four feet long) as I start yelling “CARTER NO! STOP! HOT!” and come whipping around to the other side to stop him. Carter slid off the table, onto the chair, and fell backwards off the chair onto the floor while coffee went everywhere (he held onto that cup for deal life). Thank GOD the coffee was cold. He started crying, more from me yelling than from being hurt, Jeremy came racing downstairs, and now we had a big mess, as well as yet another bath. Oh, and it is only about 8am.
Okay, so Carter is cleaned up, we put him down for his first nap and I run to the store to get the few remaining items left for dinner tonight. When I got back, the painters finally showed up to paint our house. Nice. They set to work prepping the house and eventually taping off pretty much every entry point we have. Grandma came over to pick up Carter and look at the table. We both decided it was not the right cloth, so we pulled it off, folded it back up, and she took Carter back to the store to get the right size and a different color.
In the meantime at work, I had just found out that I was going to have to travel to California the night of October 7th through October 8th. No problem, except Maynard and Aubrey (some of Jeremy’s college friends) are coming into town the night of the 7th and everyone, including Jeremy, was planning on leaving early on the 8th to head to a golf trip in Idaho. I am sure you can imagine how happy this made me (not seeing them at all, then having to impose on Grandma on a FRIDAY NIGHT to stay with Carter until I got home at 10pm). In addition, some other fun aspects of a few projects I am working on were blowing up. So I scramble to get things taken care of at work and at lunch time, I come downstairs to start the spaghetti sauce and re-make the cake. Spaghetti was super easy and smelled FANTASTIC. The cake experience went really well – I had learned from the first time around and it made a difference. The icing went on well (I had chilled it) and it wasn’t smooshing out. However, when I finally went to roll it with the icing, so that it could set in the fridge, I found that the parchment paper was completely stuck to it and it ended up in a gooey mess. WAY worse than the first one. I tossed it out, went back to work and started dealing with more issues (like, oh yeah, get your commitments for the year to your manager asap! Um, I haven’t even started them…).
I finally was able to get things into a steady and good state at work, I went and took a quick shower, came downstairs, ironed the new table cloth, went back upstairs to blow dry my hair, and came back downstairs to re-set the table again. The new color and length were perfect and everything looked amazing (in my harried state, I did not take photos of it unfortunately). Then Grandma showed up with Carter, we high fived each other about the table and I promised that I would make her a pumpkin roll for all her running around for me (I now know what I did wrong the second time), and I gave her a glass of wine for her trouble.
In the meantime, the painters had pretty much all our doors blocked off except the side garage one, so when Todd showed up, he had to call and ask how the heck he was going to get in. Oh well, we were getting our house painted! So I finally relaxed to enjoy the evening. It was fun hanging out with folks, but the smooshed icing on the cake was that one of our guests did not show and two of them didn’t get here until almost 8:30. The saving grace was that all the food was amazing! I will definitely make each item again (absolutely love that spaghetti sauce) and the bruschetta tasted even better than I anticipated.
And now it is Saturday. A new day. Back to normalcy, with a freshly painted house. I will get photos up once everything is done!