My work sent me to Nashville last week. As I mentioned in my last post, my mom came with me so that I could bring my daughter, too. My mom wrote two blog posts about our trip -- one that highlighted all of the negative experiences (mostly caused by our hotel), and another about the good/fun stuff. You can check out her blog for the details; I don't have anything to add.
Darling girl has had a rough time this week, transitioning back to being home. She missed her dad but at the same time is being a total mama's girl and wants nothing to do with him. (Paradoxical much?) I think it's just really confusing for her that he's here-and-gone so much.
Because, speaking of the hubs, he had this awfully busy week that made for stress all around. It was the last week of school. So he spent many long hours getting files in order and helping his staff get the sites cleaned and ready to close for the summer. Thankfully the next couple of weeks should be much easier for him, and then he will be off for the summer.
Unfortunately, he's probably going back to work full time in September. I can't remember what, if anything, I've shared about the changes going on at his work. We don't know exactly what's going to happen yet so I won't speculate. When there's solid news to share, I'll share it.
To keep myself from going crazy while Nate was gone this week, I fell back on a very dirty habit: I worked on the electrical wiring in our basement. I spent my evenings standing on a four-foot ladder, shoving wires through tiny holes in the ceiling. I'm not kidding about it being dirty -- I came away from these adventures with sticky black dust up to my elbows, and chunks of I-don't-even-know-what in my hair. Nasty. But I can proudly report that, at long last, all of the lighting on the west side of the basement is rewired and it all works. There's one part that needs a fix (the wiring is backwards), and there's a bunch of old wiring that I still need to strip out. So maybe there's an evening or two of cleanup before I will be done.
This also means we can work on putting our basement back together! We can hang drywall, close up the ceiling, and do some finishing work. Neat.
As if that wasn't enough, I also made three batches of macarons this week. I finally had a taste of some real macarons when I was in Nashville and they were amazing; totally worth all of the fuss. I also had a duh moment, as I realized that I don't have to make a massive batch of macarons every time I want to try cooking them. I can half or even quarter the recipe. (Like I said, it was a duh moment.) So each little batch this week was just a quarter-sized batch. It only makes half a cookie sheet worth of macarons.
Batch One: Every single shell was cracked and none of the cookies had feet, but the insides were perfect. That's some serious progress after so many hollow batches.
Batch Two: Every shell was perfectly round and pretty with beautiful feet, but I baked them too long and they were very hard. (Grr!!!)
Batch Three: I had a toddler yanking on my pants when I was piping the cookies, so they came out in a variety of sizes and kinda oddly shaped, although most of them had feet. The insides are excellent, although perhaps a tad undercooked. I think two more minutes would have been just right.
I'll make another batch again soon (tomorrow???) and I anticipate that my cumulative knowledge is going to yield some perfect cookies here very soon. Stay tuned!
