My doctor hubby is TIRED. Like, really, really tired. After his 12-hour shift last night, they had a dinner meeting, and he didn't get home until 10:45pm. (The nature of ER work is that people work every single day of the week so there is no "Let's do this on Saturday" to lean on.)
Now, he has only today off, and then tomorrow, he has another meeting before returning to the grind on Saturday.
Speaking of Saturday, he and his staff are going to have a "fajita potluck" on Saturday. Hubby was super excited (well as excited as he gets :), because we had JUST harvested some beautiful red peppers, and he has a FANTASTIC "Roasted Red Pepper Sauce" recipe that everyone just loves.
So despite his bleary-eyed state, he works for forty-five minutes in the kitchen cutting up all our red peppers. He puts them in the oven. Then, when they are done (unbeknownst to me, mind you) he turns the oven OFF and leaves them in there just to kind of cook lightly for a few more minutes while he goes to shower.
Along comes Wendi -- going to make hot dogs for the kids for lunch. All proud of herself for not doing the normal "Boiled Hebrew Nationals" and instead baking them in the oven for that crispness everyone loves.
She turns the oven back on to pre-heat it for lunch.
A few minutes later, she opens it and puts her hotdogs in it, and because she herself is a little my-husband-has-been-working-a-ton-and-I'm-homeschooling-a-lot-of-kids-and-running-a-farm-and-not-having-him-around-to-help, she doesn't even think twice when she sees two other pans in the oven. She actually thinks: "Oh. Well this is great. We can cook two things at the same time."
Only the two whole trays of red peppers were DONE cooking. And now they cooked again. John meandered out of the bedroom, walked over to the stove, and said (fairly concerned): "Who turned the oven back on?!"
I panicked.
Why would he care about that?
Well, because his peppers were burning inside that oven with my hot dogs.
Ruined.
The whole batch.
I could have cared less had we burned store-bought peppers. Oh well. But these were are WHOLE CROP from our garden. All that work. Down the drain. So sad!
We were both SO tired that neither of us could even muster many words. I said I was sorry with tears in my eyes. He nodded and plopped down in a living room chair.
He looked defeated.
I looked defeated.
You know how when a "moment" becomes way bigger than what it should actually been apart.
It became not about peppers. It became about John being so exhausted he can barely see straight. I bring up issues to him lately, and he just looks at me like: "I know I should discuss this with you, but I just don't have it in me."
And it was about me feeling like I keep letting someone down all the time. Either a kid is mad at me for an assignment, or I forgot to grade someone's paper, or the sink isn't clean for Jacob to wash the tomatoes he just harvested, or I am a day late setting up a paddock for the sheep, or I forgot to text Grampa and Grama back with the answer to a question, or I didn't respond to a friend, haven't paid co-op dues, left something I was supposed to pick up sitting on a fellow Mama's porch for weeks. Or, instead of giving someone an envelope filled with cash, I gave them an envelope with a check for our piano teacher that I subsequently had to ask them to mail for me and write them their own check for what I owe them.
A few minutes later, JB walked up to me, and just gave me a big bear hug. We both are feeling this season of life.
But we are a team. We will get through it. Together.
Burnt red peppers and all.
P.S. If you see Jacob, PLEASE don't mention the peppers. He's the garden-guy, and I just can't bring myself to tell him I burnt the whole harvest :(
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