Cabin Fevers
Ahhh, Monday. Delightful wonderful peaceful Monday morning. Two children, up and out of the house before 7:30. And my sentence has been lifted.
I’ve been under lock-down. House arrest. For eight eternally long days. No, you’re right. I shouldn’t exaggerate. Why just the other day I was allowed out to bolster our stock of Children’s Tylenol and decongestants.
I wouldn’t dream of complaining. Nope. Not me. After all it’s just the flu. The feverish, coughing, whining, icky flu. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t all that bad. At the very least it is over. And just when a shimmer of bright lining hovered within reach, when sanity seemed possibly to be lurking around the next bend; just when it seemed safe to let the children venture out of each other’s company and into the world at large, this happened–
You can’t hear it, but that’s the sound of Mother Nature laughing as she dumped snow all over my plans to air out the children. By which I mean dangling them by their germy little ankles in the branches of our glorious autumnal trees where a gentle clarifying breeze might blow on through. Breathtaking, right? As in, they will be so busy gulping in lung-fulls of fresh air that they will have no voice to complain that so-and-so spit on me when she brushed her teeth and SHE TOUCHED ME and ahhhhhhh, I’m so over house arrest.
Breathe in. Breathe out. I can do this. If Mother Nature throws me freezing temps and whiny children, I just have to reach a bit deeper into the old parenting tool box.
And so we made a cozy fire.
And drank hot cocoa with little marshmallows.
And I let them make their own baguettes.
Before you toss too much credit my way, I should confess that this bread is not only delightfully tasty and good at distracting unruly children, but it’s also unbelievably simple to make. It’s a one-bowl, no kneading kid-pleasing kind of recipe. I got it from my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day cook book. Don’t be alarmed; I’ve come a long way since my initial attempts based on a hastily transcribed recipe from my mother resulted in that Not-So-Consumable Crusty Shards of Glass Bread.
And just 20 minutes later, we had our warm, aromatic results.
I also had two smiling children, mouths so full of homemade bread that their ability to bicker was drastically reduced.
And like the softly whirling, sparkling twinkle of the fresh falling snow, peace, sweet, silent peace, at last descended upon our home.