Managing my stress is stressing me out. But who's hungry??

Some people manage their stress through meditation or crying or painting or racquetball or eating or drinking or whatever. Me? I am prone to handling stress in two ways. If its the minor-but-annoying sort of stress, I dye my hair. If its the I-think-my-head-is-about-to-pop-off-and-roll-down-the-hall kind, I go crazy in the kitchen.

This weekend? Was a go crazy kind of couple of days.

It resulted in two batches of snickerdoodles, lemon lamb ragout over noodles, meat pie, chicken soup with homemade spaetzle, roasted and pureed butternut squash, sweet potato pudding and buttermilk biscuits.

And although this made everyone else delighted, it wound up creating three dishwasher loads of dishes, plus all the things that needed to be handwashed, sweeping up the flour I spilled and cleaning the counters 9 times.

And I seriously need to wash the kitchen floor now.

I need to find some way to manage my stress that doesn't make more work for me.


Also... Short Stuff has been sick this weekend. Not surprising, since I caught the current office plague midweek last week and it knocked me on my tush. Friday night started off badly, my husband and I getting into a rolicking, loud, painful argument after J was asleep that resulted in bitterness and hurt feelings... a horrible, wet sounding coughing from Short Stuff's room around midnight put the argument to rest for good as we both responded to his whimpers. Now, I know better than to stand behind both horses and cows. You'd think by now I would have also learned not to stand behind my husband when he picks up a sick child. Alas, both for J and me, he was immediately sick to his stomach. What is it about motherhood that turns you into someone that might once have covered your eyes in horror at a hangnail, but now lets you embrace a whimpering child without flinching at the vomit coating both of you?

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep after that. By the end of the weekend, we had to make a trip to the after-hours pediatrician and Short Stuff has a humdinger of a raging ear infection and strep. My poor monkey has not had a good weekend.

But the only part of it he's complained about? The part that distresses him to the core? Not the high fevers, not the pain in his head, not the coughing that kept him up all night. Nope. He's horrified and I mean absolutely APPALLED by the fact that he's gotten "boogies." "Is TEWWIBLE!!" he tells me, waving his hands around for added emphasis. Go figure.

And after all that, the thing I felt most like doing was cooking. Clearly, the stress is getting to me.