Overscheduled

Apparently Cleo has gotten over her horror at Fred the Kitten's residence. As long as he is sleeping, and remember, he's a CAT, so he sleeps about 23.5 hours per day, she finds his purry warmth pretty appealing. I like having them curl up next to me while I grade the bazillion and a quarter papers I have to get through.

This weekend, though, I'm just going to be looking at them in envy, because in a relatively busy life, this one is way beyond what I would have voluntarily scheduled.

Tomorrow, I have emergency shelter training in the morning. Then Thing 2 has her first belt test in Kung Fu (and I tell you, watching her practice her routine in flannel pajamas, going, "Ha! Ha! Ha!" is a sight for the ages), and we go straight from that to the town's Christmas Tree lighting and "ice" skating. After that? A neighborhood pot luck dinner! Sunday is Christmas play rehearsal and piano recital for the three older Things.

But it all starts tonight. Instead of having pizza at home as we usually do, we're walking to a homeschooling friend's house for Country Club, where we talk about, make presentations about, and eat a meal inspired by a country. Sounds nice, huh?

When I realized that we were almost out of sandwich bread this afternoon, after I had made the dough for pasteles, I just sighed and mixed up my standard batch of our household bread. After the first rise, right when my sister came over to knit while I graded, I punched the dough down and put it back in the oven, covered with a plastic bag to keep it moist.

Then the two youngest girls and I trotted off to another Kung Fu lesson, since Thing 3 is under orders not to participate until January and Thing 2 is taking "his" spot for the month. When I came home, I switched on the oven, thanked my sister for watching the boys, and started the kids peeling and melting caramels.

Within 10 minutes, everything went to pot. I realized the dough was in the oven, and pulled it out to find something like this on top:

Melted right over the dough, which had begun to cook on all edges, of course. I didn't take a picture of the dough-clad bowls because it's just too sad. I scooped out the dough, quickly formed them into loaves, and tossed them onto the baking stone. I figure we'll at least have hearth loaves.

Then, I realized I had taken my eyes off of the caramel pot. Oh dear.

Yep. Nicely burnt. I rescued enough to slap into the dough and we worked, assembly-style, to get them into the oven. After checking on them twice, I realized that I had reflexively turned the oven off when I yanked the dough bowls out. Had to turn it back on to actually, you know, bake the cookies.

Fortunately, other people are in charge of the rest of dinner.

And I added another row of squares. Fortunately for me, while I was doing that, I was only watching Kung Fu and reading to Thing 4 -- so a normal amount of multitasking.

I'm looking forward to Monday.