March 14: Milk-Chocolate Cookies

I finally found milk chocolate for baking.

After checking and rechecking the shelves at Safeway and QFC (just to make sure I didn't miss it the first five times I looked), I concluded that it wasn't going to be easy to find this crucial ingredient in so many recipes. Next stop: specialty stores. And I do love my specialty stores.

I found it on my first try: It was only $12 per pound at Williams-Sonoma. My lucky day.

So, last night I made Milk-Chocolate Cookies (pg. 79). They were easy and smelled really good. The boys loved them (especially accompanied by the last of the milk at 9:30 p.m.). They're a little crunchy for me. But they look real pretty all stacked up in my glass cookie jar.

Would you believe that it's snowing? Again? It's 7:19 a.m., and I'm preparing to head out to Starbucks and QFC with Renee. I realized last night that someone was going to have to go to the store bright and early for milk. Needless to say, we're not walking. The last time we went, James caught us returning in Renee's minivan. Well, I didn't think of it as being caught until he started exclaiming about how he always thought we walked up there for the exercise. Snort. We go to coffee to get away from our families! We do walk, but only between May and September. And never in the rain.

I don't think the snow is sticking. And it doesn't look terribly cold. But cold enough to snow. So that's cold enough. I've had it with winter. After the cluster$%&*that was December, we've all had enough of it.

I'm not really motivated to do anything today. I have no momentum for housework, having spent a big chunk of yesterday in an urgent care clinic waiting room with Ian. He's had a cold for about two weeks, but as of Friday night, his eyes looked terrible--all creased, baggy and red. His normally big, blue eyes were nothing more than swollen little triangles. My eyes itch just thinking about it. James claimed it's a normal cold symptom, but my Mommy Instinct insisted it was something more. So we spent three hours at MultiCare because our pediatrician's office is closed on Saturdays.

Three hours in any waiting room with a four-year-old is hard enough. But urgent care clinics are a special kind of torture. To keep him busy, I dug a pen out of my purse and had him draw pictures of animals on the back of the HIPAA brochure. That worked great until he dropped the pen. He dove under the chair to get it, then came up with a grin, announcing that, "I found something yummy to eat!"

I like to think it was the look on my face rather than my exclamation of "What the heck were you thinking?!" that made him burst into tears. Mid-wail I could see the blue residue on his molars that I assumed came from the yummy something. So I immediately went into freak-out mode, envisioning the stray pharmaceutical he probably consumed. I was trying to decide which would be worse--painkiller, antibiotic or Viagra--when it dawned on me that we were probably in the best possible place to be when consuming unidentified "somethings." So, after impressing upon him how we just don't eat things off the floor and trying to see if there were any more yummy somethings under my chair, I decided to just wait and see what happened.

I'm pleased to report that he suffered no ill effects. Nor, however, did we ever get a diagnosis. We did get a prescription for $45 allergy eye drops. His eyes do look better. Now, instead of looking like he's been beat up, he just looks hungover.

If I could just get myself organized and motivated, there's a ton of housework needing my attention today. I did manage, though, to dispose of Super Fish last night. He succumbed to his bacterial disease sometime on Friday. I almost flushed him without telling Ian. But then I decided that would be dishonest, so I broke the news on my way to the bathroom with net in hand. Ian jumped up, grinned and said, "Ooh. Poor little fishy! Can I touch the dead, little fish?"

I explained that we don't touch a dead fish unless we're planning to eat it. We said goodbye to Super Fish, told him we were sorry he got sick and sent his stiff little body "back to the ocean where he came from." Ian already wants a lizard.

Okay. It's official. I need to get up and get moving. There are rooms to clean, things to put away and school papers to sign. Christian needs help with a big school project, there's grocery shopping to do, dinners to plan, eye drops to administer, a contaminated fish tank to toss. Etc., etc., etc. Why is it I can make a mission of finding specific kinds of baking chocolate, but sometimes when it comes to picking up the family room, I'd just rather read the paper?