Weekend madness.

The veil has almost lifted - the madness is nearing its end. Every weekend, I enter into a temporary state of insanity. Like my mom, I'm a meal planner. I pore over cookbooks, trying to figure out what's best to make. Unlike my mom, I don't spend a whole lot of time poring (I don't read cookbooks for fun) and I also try to get the most nutritional bang for my buck. Then, each weekend, I get the ingredients and go nuts so I don't have to during the week.

Because we're going to be seeing a lot of friends and neighbors this weekend, I've made dough for several dozen cookies - well, several dozen each of three different types anyway. Gingerbread, pecan sandies and something I made up that tastes like a chai spiced sugar cookie only was made with vanilla cake mix.

I've also made eggplant parmesan and will shortly be roasting a chicken. Then I'll be done. It's remarkable what you can do with a roasted chicken in just 15 minutes. Anyway, the madness is fading and I'm left with...a whole lot of cookie dough that still needs to be baked and an extremely messy kitchen. Blast. Now I have to clean the thing up.

Anyway, less than a week to go before we leave for India. I'm sad we won't be around for Christmas, but I'm looking forward to leaving town for a while and not having to clean all the time. I refuse to admit to my mother that I wish we were going at a different time because she cries every time she thinks about me going to India (she's laying on a HUGE guilt trip at every opportunity; come to think of it, so is work).

I don't want to a) make her cry more and b) have to comfort her while she cries. God, that sounds selfish. But coming from a family where tears are used as an extremely effective weapon and not necessarily to indicate pain, I'm a little immune. If my mom cries, I hate to admit it, but I feel more annoyance than anything else. I suppose that makes me a terrible daughter, but I can't change the way I feel anymore than she can get over the ingrained response of crying to gain attention. Ah, family.