“Maybe you can make us a traditional Irish dinner for Saint Patrick’s Day.”
My husband and I are going to have our grandson overnight. I was thinking carryout, but Gary was going by what usually happens in our house when there is a major or minor holiday, special TV show, event in someone’s life, or time when I am feeling creative; we have some kind of ridiculous theme dinner. Back in the years before I became bored with American Idol, I hosted a finale party that was both over the top and greatly anticipated by my guests. I’ve made Halloween food that included cheese goblins, stromboli snakes and shrunken apple heads floating in hot mulled cider. This past December I threw a Hanukkah party; we’re not Jewish. My latest project was baking 90 black and white cookies, 4 inches in diameter each, to save my daughter $135 had she ordered them from the bakery. Doing these things can be tiring, but it is something that is fun for me.
That being said, sometimes when we hit midlife, we woman tend to become ever so slightly unpredictable. I’ve discussed this phenomenon with my same age friends, and we came up with a few possible theories. Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep from the all-too-common complaint of insomnia. Maybe we’re just burned out from years of doing it all. Could it be that we are now too smart not to know that we can just go get ready-made food or let someone else take care of the work? We’re pretty sure that Hilary Clinton has better things to do than make baked brie en croute in the shape of a football, or fret over the blueberries being in a straight line on her July 4th flag cake. Yet we wonder, does she sometimes board the plane and sit there in her seat, exhausted, and wonder, “OMG! Do I have to do EVERYTHING around here?”
And so what was an innocent suggestion, “Maybe you can make us a traditional Irish dinner for Saint Patrick’s Day”, ended with me slamming a box of Lucky Charms and a bottle of Guinness onto the counter. Sure I dug out my recipe for shepherd’s pie and homemade dinner rolls. But what is served will greatly depend on which Me wakes up on Saturday morning.
