On Broccoli and Bedtime

Apparently, it’s only Tuesday evening—not even bedtime for the above-toddler crowd. It feels later in the day and in the week. Thursday, at least.

We all have days that just don’t go right. Nothing horribly wrong (until supper, but that’s later), but nothing super-duper right, either. And, if you’re living in a skin like mine, a brain like mine, a life like mine, and if God is in an ornery mood, that might be one of the days darkness creeps in like an emotional fog. I don’t even know what spurred the darkness, only that I felt it coming and an ordinary Tuesday turned into a day to survive. Bedtime was my prize.

Yay.

On days like today, nothing seems to go well. If I reevaluate tomorrow, the projects that can’t reach “mediocre” on their tiptoes today won’t seem so bad, my stupid mistakes might seem funny, students’ misbehavior more laughable than annoying. Maybe. Tomorrow. Right now, I’m isolating myself for everyone’s safety.

So at the end of a day when I can’t say what, specifically, went wrong, only that it sucked, the last thing I wanted to do was cook supper. I did want to eat supper, though, and I like to take leftovers for lunch. So, crabby-but-responsible adult that I am, I fed the demanding cats and set about making a standby—broccoli stir-fry. In my kitchen, this meal counts as comfort food.

Not so much today.

Now, I do have a long history of cooking fails, so much so that Coop once declared a semi-salvaged meal my “best culinary f*ck-up ever.” The kitchen smoke detector was long ago renamed the dinner bell.

It does get a workout.

Back to the stir-fry. I love broccoli stir-fry. Lots of mushrooms and garlic, some sesame oil, some heat. Tonight, entirely too much heat, but of a different kind. Supper was coming along just fine, so I turned down the heat and *attempted* to multi-task. Whoops. What seemed like five minutes later, I hear an, “Oh shit” from the kitchen, followed by, “It’s a little smoky out here.”

Slight understatement. I’m just glad the rice was in the Instant Pot, which is really the only way I should cook. Jeff doesn’t mind burnt food (good damn thing), so he ate the stir-fry. I tried, dumped mine in the trash, and had rice. With butter. Low-key comfort food, I guess. A let down for sure.

The clock finally tells me I can call it a day pretty soon. Some iPad backgammon, my polar bear pajama pants, and the end of a John Grisham audiobook should see me to my sleep. Today was just a day. We’ll try again tomorrow.

Too bad about my leftovers-for-lunch plan, though.