I should be driving to Naginata now. Doolies is driving to Naginata. I bailed as my energy ran out after dinner and head started hurting. I also should be taking out the trash. That I don’t have a choice unless I want a huge pile of trash. I’ll take it out after I finish my 30 minutes.

Cholent is cooking on the stove, a last 30 minute simmer before it’s popped in the oven for the night. It took longer than the cookbook’s claim of 20 minutes of prep. It smells good, but the real test will be the taste on Thursday. My mother and Tiger will get a sneak peak tomorrow night as Doolies and I won’t be eating to save up our appetite for our Rover’s date night. While Cholent sounds yummy, an evening alone with the Doolies at a French restaurant sounds even yummier. Even if it’s on a Wednesday night.

Last night I think was also better sleep-wise. I can’t be sure. Wait, I can. My Fitbit supposedly tracked it. Let’s see what it thinks. I took 5,234 steps and climbed 14 floors. I burned 2,043 calories and travelled 2.57 miles. But that’s not what I’m looking for. It claims I slept for 8 hours, 41 minutes, fell asleep in 8 minutes (that I believe) and only awakened 5 times for a 98% sleep efficiency. That looks like a good night’s sleep. I guess I’m still working through my sleep debt because I don’t feel that rested. Then again, it is getting late and I had a busy day at work. I’ll trust in the little Fitbit. For now.

I’m eating a cheese sandwich. Dinosaur is upstairs with my mother. We only have her help for another day, so I figured I’d take full advantage of it. It’s not that I don’t love my son, but if someone else wants to walk around the house with him while he sends out his dinosaur cries—at least for one more night—so be it. According to my spy camera Tiger is asleep fully covered. She’s related to me: I put her down eight minutes ago and she’s already sleeping. That’s the good genes. Hopefully she didn’t receive too many of my bad genes.

Hold on while I skim the simmering cholent. Four more minutes and off it goes into the oven for the night. That just leaves the garbage to take out and I’m free of responsibility. Outside of helping with Dinosaur before bed. And then it’ll be time for work again. This cycle is looking vicious when I put it that way. I should put it another way.

My head is delicate as if it’s stuffed with too many cotton balls embedded with tiny needles. Except the pain is not that sharp. Maybe blunted needles, thick ones. I could nap now but that probably won’t be good for my sleep tonight. I can always tell fatigue headaches because when I close my eyes they miraculously go away until I open them again. If I keep them closed for too long then I fall asleep and it hurts more when I open them. As I said, vicious cycles all around.

The one minute warning beeper went off on the timer. Time for a final skimming and a move of the pot into the oven. Fun!

Okay, cholent has been moved to the oven. Doolies went out and bought the pound of Kosher salami for the cholent. The recipe calls for it to be put in after the simmering. I originally forgot about it and put the pot in the oven. Then I remembered that Doolies made a special trip to the grocery store for the salami (and our rotisserie chicken for dinner) and decided, for purposes of my marriage, it was best to chop up the salami and put it in. It’s now simmering in the pot in the oven. Hopefully it makes the dish yummier. The deli guy laughed when Doolies asked for the pound of salami. His cholent recipe does not call for such an ingredient. Hopefully he’s been missing out.

I wonder if cooking should be considered a creative activity that I can use to eat up words. That would be a bit easy and is probably not in the spirit of this time. Not that I’m looking to cut this short but I’m still feeling a bit queasy from the headache and the salami. Not the salami. The salami is fine, Doolies. It will be very yummy. (Good thing we have my mother to be the taste tester tomorrow night.) The cholent should last us many, many meals as it serves 10-11 people. Stewed meat is usually yummier the more times you heat it up. I’ll let you know if that truth holds for this dish.

I’m technically at my time if I don’t discount my cholent breaks. Like a soccer game I should probably add time to the clock to take into account my brief trips to the kitchen. I like that only the referee knows the real time, and he’s not willing to share it with the crowd. It keeps things a bit more archaic. Like they don’t have a way of electronically sending the referee’s clock to the big board. It feels like the referee has more power that way. I wonder what the difference between a referee and umpire is. I think an umpire is a baseball thing. I’m sure there’s an easy answer but I don’t have the energy to find it. I have to save that energy to take out the garbage.

Speaking of garbage, the clock has official run out on the injury time. Or was it cooking time? Time to head out of the house into the cold night with the yard waste and garbage bins and leave it for the early morning garbage picker-upper. Good on them.