The Laundry Can Wait

I am frozen.  I thought I was getting so much time now that my three children are all in school all day.  But I am drowning in goals I’ve set for myself.  Writing goals, cooking and baking goals, volunteering goals.  My kitchen is a mess.  There are dirty dishes in the sink.  Deadlines are swimming like sharks around me.  So much laundry and dust.  New recipes are pinned to the refrigerator.

In the meantime, I’ve made zucchini muffins, eggplant parmigiana, giamobotta (pronounced jum-bought if you are from Jersey) with peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes and eggplant – all from the Farmers’ Market – all during my private afternoons and all of which my family won’t even taste.

I learned how to make a proper roux and bechamel sauce thanks to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and from there made a deliciously creamy homemade macaroni and cheese with aged Wisconsin cheddar and smoked gouda (thumbs up from my middle child and from my husband. Although Tang, as I will lovingly refer to my man from here on out, shook his head saying that dirtying three pots for mac n cheese is too much work.  He also added up the cost to make sure it wasn’t cheaper just to buy a couple of boxes of Kraft.  It wasn’t.).

I am writing a food memoir and am working with a teacher/author at the University of Wisconsin through a memoir writing course.  Is this too much personal information for a blog?  I don’t know.  But I will say that I have decided to Go Big or Go Home – to take the Big risks when it comes to criticism or worse, indifference.  I am setting out to either make it as a writer or Fail Big.

And if I don’t succeed?  Then I’m going out in a Blaze of Glory.  Nothing small anymore.

I want fireworks.  I want everyone to know me as the girl who keeps trying, who may be a little crazy and that’s fine with me, because no one ever remembers the girl who always got her laundry done.