Suffer my madness, and I'll feed you well.

Sometimes I'm stubborn about sticking to my crazy, hair-brained plans. They aren't really crazy, after all, just a little more ambitious than the rest of my family cares about being. Though I wonder, as I (and everyone around me) suffer through the madness, whether it's worth it. Tonight happened to be one of the rare times it was. I think so, anyway.

Let's just say it's been a busy couple weeks. First, the cat got shut into our bedroom closet for an entire day, leaving the carpet inside smelling, well, not so lovely. So, my mom and I spent a day clearing out this mess...


Then, Scott (aka UberDad aka Love-of-my-life-who-puts-up-with-me-with-only-mild-complaining) ripped up the carpet to find this...


And spent the next five days turning it into this...


Isn't that pretty? Meanwhile, we'd spent three nights at my parents' house to avoid the finish fumes, so I had a little laundry to catch up with...


While I was doing laundry, with just two days left before our trip, someone finally bought our 60 gallon saltwater aquarium. We hadn't had any fish for a few months, and decided it was time to downsize. My oldest found a 10-gallon tank at a yard sale, and wanted guppies -- something he could manage on his own. The boys really needed the space in their bedroom that the 60-gallon tank was using.

But once the tank was gone, a layer of salt along the wall needed to be cleaned up. And I realized I hadn't dusted in there in months. Or changed the sheets. So, I spent most of the day cleaning their room. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture to preserve the moment. But even with puzzles and Bionicles covering the floor once more, at least I know it's clean underneath!

And, after all that, it was really time to pack for the homeschooling conference. But first! I realized I had a bunch of these...



That needed to be turned into this...


Because otherwise they might have rotted while we were gone. So, I spent five hours peeling, chopping, cooking and canning tomato sauce and salsa while dictating orders to everyone else so that we'd be packed and ready to go the next day.

Yeah, looking back, it wasn't my best choice. Did I mention the boys and I came home with a bad cold? I spent Sunday evening crashed on the couch while Scott unloaded the car and made dinner. Then I crawled into bed at 7:30.

So, I decided to spend yesterday taking it easy, right? No, I did that Monday. By Tuesday we were really low on groceries, and it was time to make my monthly run to WinCo. I don't know about you, but grocery shopping wipes me out every time. 'Course, making a list for UberDad seemed like even more work. So, off to the store I went. In and out in only... two hours.

Usually I plan on something easy for dinner after a major shopping trip. But I didn't add any other errands onto this one, and I had a six or seven little eggplants begging to be eaten. I really wanted to make eggplant parmesan for the first time, despite feeling like what I should really do is crawl back in bed.

Fortunately, Scott took pity on me and helped get the kitchen ready and make spaghetti for the boys, while I worked on the eggplant parmesan -- using the tomato sauce I made last week, of course.


Do you know how good it feels to make something using ingredients you've grown yourself? Especially when it turns out REALLY yummy?

It's worth the effort, it really is.