Radish fail

Our dinner party last night was insanely fun, but as I'm getting old (and age + wine do not = good sleep), I slept poorly afterwards and paid for it dearly today. Though it was completely worth it in every respect, Tom left for work at 7:30am, returned briefly for J's baseball game at 5p, then left again and I doubt I'll be able to stay up until he returns home; solo-parenting on a Sunday on no sleep is not easy. And please remember that because of whatever reason we are still celebrating Columbus Day, there is no school tomorrow. I'm having snow-day PTS redux.

I do not know how military wives and spouses of workaholics and single parents do it. I really don't. My hat is off and my heart goes out to how hard that must be sometimes, or much more than that. I mean, surely some of them have help, and that is great and I hope so, but many others do not. I'm always stunned at how much has to be put on the back burner of the back forty when I'm alone with the boys for really long periods of time. I count twelve hours on a Sunday a really long period of time, and pretty much every day since I returned from NM has been some degree of today. I can feel things I'd wanted to do just slipping away as if I'm a boat leaving port, my plans stuck to the dock and the distance between us growing steadily greater.

Let's hear it for Tuesday?

We did go to the farmers market this morning. Dear Friend M joined us as she'd not been in years and has, recently, been very keen on upping her cooking skills ante. The boys gobbled their regular pizza from the Red Zebra, and then M and I each downed a market taco trio from Chaia before the four of us ventured into the depths of the FM.

Mark Bittman was signing copies of his newest book, Bonaparte didn't yet have any eclairs although today's chilly weather would have made it the perfect day to roll them out (humidity + eclair pastry don't mix!), we bought lots of apples, some cider and some veggies and then decided to buy a slew of radishes and have a tasting back at home.

Ol loves radishes in general, as do I, and we thought it'd be so much fun to slice all these up, sample and compare notes. Jack was enthused too. In fact, I've found that this kind of "game" more often than not ensures much greater taste participation by both kids. Food for thought.

We got home, I made a pretty display for us, we each grabbed a round and took our first bites.

Within seconds, Jack gasped, Oliver started fanning his tongue with a crazed look in his eyes and I thought for sure a fiery sandstorm was flying from each of my nostrils. I jumped up so quickly that my chair flew backward and raced to fill three glasses with icy water. We had to douse the flames engulfing our tongues. After recovering, we each tentatively took a bite of what should have been the less spicy ones; no go. Eyes watering, we immediately emptied what remained in our cups and called it a day.

These were not only the hottest radishes I've ever had but also the most unpleasant in nearly every other way: fibrous, vaguely dessicated, no evidence of the sweet, watery crunch I love in a good radish. The kids and I looked at each other and said, "Well, that's not what we expected."

Nothing about today really was. Adieu!