Is our goose is cooked?

The youngest has cooked three dinners this week because I’ve been too busy.

It’s been a crazy whirl of school drop offs, Asahi officially acquiring CUB and various other developments in the drinks world. As a result, I’ve been still tapping away well past dinner time.

Thursdays are always pretty intense because I need eight strong articles for my weekly Drinks Trade newsletter, plus an alluring main headline.

The newsletter goes out to 10,000 drinks industry email addresses and the challenge is to get as many recipients to open it as possible. I usually manage to get around a third to do it, which is apparently not too bad.

I still didn’t have a main story at lunchtime yesterday, cue minor panic. Then a question popped into my head: is alcohol recession proof?

And there it was. Well, at least, there was the idea for the main story, then I had to research and write it.

I was feeling a bit shattered by late afternoon when a message from a complete stranger popped into my LinkedIn messages.

She thanked me for the valuable information I’ve been providing on the website and asked me to keep it up.

Isn’t it lovely that people take the time to do that? And wasn’t her timing perfect?

Anyways, back to the youngest’s cooking.

On Tuesday, she whipped up chorizo and avocado pasta, on Wednesday she made chicken curry and last night’s creation was soft tacos with Mexican lamb and roasted corn salsa. All delicious.

Each of those nights I was supposed to slow-cook beef for tacos, but I kept forgetting to put it in the oven in time because I was so distracted.

I’ve quite enjoyed not cooking and the youngest has embraced the challenge with relish. I’m not quite sure how she manages to chop vegetables and watch the entire back catalogue of Gilmore Girls – for the third time – simultaneously, but she does. Bless her.

The experience hasn’t been without collateral damage, including tumeric stains all over my laminex and a blow-up last night because I took over cooking the lamb strips when I discovered they were in a too-small frying pan.

She was furious with me and I felt pretty terrible about it afterwards. I am such an annoying control freak sometimes, particularly in the kitchen. Add that to the long list of reasons why I’m no longer with my husband and he’s gone on to become a gourmet home chef in his later years. I hope I haven’t put the youngest off cooking for me. And add that to my loooooong list of regrets.

Also on the downside is that I’ve been having trouble sleeping because I’m so wired from the busy days. I have a slightly crazed look about me, enhanced by not having time to spray paint my grey roots. On Wednesday I didn’t even manage a shower … good thing DD and I don’t live together …

I am really looking forward to unwinding over the long weekend. Although it involves hiking over to my ex’s place to retrieve the youngest’s forgotten skipping ropes from his letterbox, as he’s gone away for a few days. His absence also means I’m single parenting on Sunday night, so my cuddle time on the couch and Monday sunrise are in jeopardy. Dammit!

Though the weather app tells me it will be 16C and pissing down on Monday, which doesn’t sound very appealing for sitting on a headland at 6.30am, but would probably enhance cuddling on the couch.

I keep forgetting it’s a long weekend in NSW this weekend as everything tends to blur together during COVID-19 … home, work, parenting, weekends, weekdays … I constantly lose track.

Have you found that?

I hope you have something nice and relaxed planned if it’s a long weekend in your neck of the woods.

OK, I’m off to obsessively monitor my open rate. Seeya!

Song of the day:  Mental as Anything “Let’s cook”