Has Anyone Seen My Mind?

My husband has been out of town this week.  My parents (a.k.a my 3 year old’s occasional daycare) were out of town last week.  I am losing whatever mind I thought I had two weeks ago.  How do people do this?  Do people do this?  Stay home alone, full-time with a nursing newborn and a hyper/extremely opinionated 3 year old?  It’s insane!!  I’ve cried every day.  Like, stupid-ugly cried.  Why?  I have no idea.  I certainly hope it’s temporary hormones because I do not like this new me.  She scares me.

I took my kids to the grocery store this morning, during the one time slot of the day where my daughter is guaranteed to be asleep on a full tummy and my son is guaranteed to be awake on a full tummy.  We have exactly 2 hours during this time to have the dog taken out and put away in her crate, have my son go potty, my daughter put gently in her car seat, (carefully as to not wake her up), get everyone loaded in the car, shop at the store (carefully as to keep him amused and to not wake her up), and unload all the groceries before she wakes up to be fed again.  We do this once a week.

Today, we got as far as putting the baby in her car seat before my son, who was playing in the garage, calmly says to me, ‘Look mommy, there’s a mouse!’  (Before I continue this story, let me take a break to fill you in on my biggest problem with that statement.  I am scared of one thing in this world.  Rats.  Yes, I know a mouse is not a rat.  But when I see one, it absolutely is.  They are one in the same.)  I tried to hide my terror when I heard him say this and mostly remain optimistic that he was confused.  I mean, he’s only three…he could have just thought he saw a mouse.  Maybe it was a sock.  Yes, it must have been a furry, grey sock.  With a tail.  After many minutes of him pointing to the same spot in the garage and me asking him (as fake-calmly as I could) where the damn thing was, I finally saw it.  There, on top of an old bag of golf clubs my father had given to my husband, was my worst enemy.  The scariest creature in all the land was hanging out in my garage, just chillin’ on the nine iron.

After a lot of great acting on my part and a ton of internal freaking out, I deduced that not only had my father given my husband a golf bag equipped with clubs, he had given us a mouse in a little mouse house.  Does the mouse know that he moved?  Did he know he went for a car ride?  Oh lord…were we driving my car that day or my husband’s?  Oh no.  I was the one who took the golf bag out of the car and put it in the garage.  I touched a mouse house.  Must wash hands.

Despite the past two week’s craziness and the close encounter with a monster I had this morning, I had it in my head all day that I was going to make my husband a welcome-home cake.  And I was going to attempt fondant for the first time.  Because when I decide I am going to do something, I do it even if the world around me crumples to the ground.  It’s probably a character flaw, but it’s just how I am.  So after we returned from the store and got everything unloaded, I started to feed my daughter and make a cake…at the same time.  I only had 2 hours before my husband would be walking through the door so I had to hurry.  I managed to get the cake in the oven and pulled out to cool before I put my son down for a nap, then was able to finish the rest of it with my daughter either attached to me, or close to it.  The fondant was fairly easy to make, but when it came time to rolling and placing it on top of the cake, having just the one good arm and the stress of the ticking clock looming overhead, I just gave up and decided that this cake would look about as good as I did at the moment.

So, I present to you, Abbey’s Stressed Out Cake.

(For the recipe, visit Paula Deen’s website.  The cake had a great flavor, but was a little dry and crumbly for my taste.  The fondant I made was actually a marshmallow fondant and was a cool thing to now know how to do, it even tasted better than traditional fondant.  My only complaint is that is was more like taffy than fondant and was hard to eat with the cake.  Overall I think I won’t attempt the cake again, or the fondant unless I’m planning on using it as taffy for my next kids party.)