Laundry, Church, and Chickens

I think I've been having one of those weeks.  You know.  Those weeks where you just look at yourself and think, Is this really my life?  Not in a bad way, mind you.  Just in a reflective way.  I mean, I could have spent all week describing the mountains of clean laundry that are mutating out of my laundry room, taking over my house and threatening my children.  Or perhaps you might have liked to hear about the dozens of chickens that have sacrificed their lives in my crusade to roast the perfect chicken.  Because seriously, it seems like that is the sum total of my life these days.  Laundry and chicken.  Actually, I shouldn't say that.  It's laundry, chicken, husband, children with a small smattering of play dates, teacher conferences, and rain.  Somehow that doesn't sound much better.  I guess I've just felt like I haven't had much to write about lately.  

But, enough about that.  

We've been going to church lately.  I'm still not sure how I feel about that.  I'm leaning toward not wanting to raise my children as Catholics, but I'm giving it another try.  If we do decide to remain in the Catholic Church; I think it will be something that I struggle with on a daily basis.  That, and I will probably become a permanent nursery helper.  All in all, it's not a bad parish.  The people seem normal enough.  But there's a school there.  And that almost automatically means that my children will be left out because they will NEVER attend the school.  Nothing against people whose children do, it's just not for us.  

But, as part of our attempt to give it our best shot, we attended the Lenten fish fry dinner on Friday night.  I won't go into the fact that the only veggie on the plate was the ketchup.  That could happen anywhere.  The priest came over to us while we were watching the girls play after dinner.  He had already introduced himself to Todd, and was coming over to introduce himself to me.  We made small talk about how we had just moved from Virginia, and he quickly said that Of course Sunshine would start at the church school next fall.  Well, no.  I said that she was a student at a really wonderful Montessori school, that she was thriving there, and that I would like to, at some point, get my Montessori teaching license.  You would think, that after all that, he would have left it alone.  But no.  He had to then tell me how much trouble Montessori children had when transferring to Catholic school.  Wow.  Really, Sherlock?  No Montessori parent in their right mind would ever consider a Catholic school when faced with having to transfer their child.  Talk about totally different theories of education.  

I think this just irked me on a lot of different levels.  Sure, it might take a little while to get used to having to sit at a desk all day.  But Montessori kids are actually incredibly adaptable.  They can manage their own time, and they're incredibly free-thinking.  And I may be guessing here, but I think that was what the priest was talking about.  And that's not even mentioning the misguided attempt to up their enrollment numbers.  I was polite though, and said it was very nice to meet him.  After he left, Todd made a comment about how that was on his Top Ten List on How NOT to Endear Yourself to My Wife.  

Wow.  Well, right now I'm thinking that this was so NOT how I'd imagined this post going.  

On a lighter note, we sat down to chicken chili tacos for dinner last night.  Delicious.  And it gave my kids a chance to chow down on sour cream.  Because, given the chance, they will eat it by the spoonful.  And yes, I give them lots of greek yogurt.  Most of the time they don't realize that it's not sour cream.  And it's handy to have around for dips.  But I had the real thing out last night.  I took my eye off the container for one quick second.   Turning around, I thought I caught the sour cream spoon coming out of Sunshine's mouth.  A quick talk about no licking the serving spoon, a trip back to the silverware drawer, and we were back to eating dinner.  Not two minutes later, the spoon was coming out of her mouth again.  NO LICKING THE SPOON, I said.  Oh, but Mommy.  I didn't lick the spoon.  I put the whole spoon in my mouth, she said primly.  Lovely.  Looks like we're going to have to be much more technically correct in the future.  

It's been a busy weekend here.  I dealt with the mountains of clean laundry.  And even started on the mountains of not-so-clean clothes.  Bonus points for me.  Sadly, dealing with the latter leads to more of the former.  Oh well.  We did convert the dining room into an office.  Because we've only used it once.  And while that event was a success (no one cried), I can't imagine Todd would want to repeat it.  I'm actually sitting in the office right now, and it's beautiful.  Perhaps having our filing cabinets downstairs will actually make it a little easier to, you know, file all the stuff that gets sent here.  

By the way... I made this for dinner tonight.  It was amazing.  I roasted the chicken whole, instead of cutting it up.  I know, I'm lazy, but I can't stand cutting up chicken and it's so much cheaper to buy it whole.  I also added some diced butternut squash to the sweet onions.  I didn't have orzo, so I substituted Israeli couscous, and the kids couldn't get enough of it.  Huge success.  And the smoked paprika is so important to this dish.  Definitely worth a try.  I guess that's just one more chicken.  Well, it was a good way to go.  For a chicken.