Today is Thursday. Tonight I have my Personal Chef Practicum class. This is class number 5 of 10 – almost halfway done. The first three classes we were just in the classroom for two hours per night and then last week we had our first cooking night. I don’t think this class is wonderful, but it is a requirement for my program, so I am just plugging away. I thought I was going to love this class, since it should be teaching me the nuts and bolts of what I want to do starting in December/January, but the chef isn’t a great teacher, so instead I am just biding my time waiting for it to be done. It isn’t worth complaining to the school administrators about, but it does feel like kind of a waste of money.
On the other hand, I did learn to make Avgolemono soup and Baklava last week, so it isn’t a total waste of time. Those are things that I would have been totally intimidated by making in the past, so it increases my confidence and teaches me some new techniques.
This week in Baking and Pastry we worked on “laminated doughs” – puff pastry, danish dough, croissant dough. It was hard work and I was shocked to discover yesterday that my muscles are tired. Not just my arms, which would be almost expected when you spend 3 hours rolling out dough that doesn’t want to roll out, but also my abdominal muscles. That is horrifying. I am definitely not doing enough yoga if rolling dough is making my abs tired and sore. (That’s not to much of a shock, though, considering that I think I have been to yoga three times since January.)
The making of the doughs went pretty well, and then we had to fold and roll them to get all those beautiful layers that are so deliciously formed by the copious quantities of butter in the dough. My dough was too warm when I was rolling it out the final time, so not only were my croissants ugly, they also fell totally apart in the oven. I almost cried standing at my bench with croissant dough melting on my fingers while I was trying to roll them out, and then again when the chef-instructor told me not to send my croissants to the dining room because no one would eat them.
I am not accustomed to having things not turn out the way they are supposed to. In this program it has only happened once before, and it was a funny thing, not a distressing thing that time, but that disaster (where I made my French chef-instructor swear for the first time all term – “oh, sheet” – by stirring and stirring my Pommes Lyonnaise so they turned into mashed potatoes) only wasted a half hour of my time, whereas I had worked on these croissants for probably 6 hours. It was depressing.
I am having a hard time with the afternoon and evening hours as well as days later in the week. I think part of it is that the lack of sleep during this program is catching up to me. I am not sure what the rest of it is. Sometimes at lunch I spend my time reading about infertility and reading discussion boards on the Taking Care of Your Fertility website, and I don’t think it is great for my mental state. But I am thinking about it fairly constantly anyway, so what is the harm in educating myself more. I read about all of the failures, though – people aren’t on the “Dealing with Infertility” board, or whatever it is called, because they have success stories. Then I worry and worry and worry that maybe three insurance-paid attempts won’t be enough. What if I don’t get pregnant in those three attempts? There are plenty of people out there who have 3 or more failed IVF attempts. What if I am only able to have one baby in three attempts? I don’t want just one baby.
Anyway, I digress into where my mind gets to almost every afternoon. So, late in the work-day is becoming a struggle for me to stay upbeat for. Then by the time I get to class, I am still feeling down and I don’t want to be there. This has especially been the case with the Personal Chef class, and not so much with Baking and Pastry. I think it has something to do with being late in the week and something to do with not getting enough sleep to properly enjoy being in class until 10:30 at night. Even though I worked from home yesterday and therefore was able to sleep in until 8 am, I still only got 6 1/2 to 7 hours of sleep – and I like to have at least 8. Thank God for the flexibility that my boss has been willing to give me in working from home or I would really be giving myself mono. But I am still tired this afternoon. Could it be the 3 or 4 glasses of wine that I had at book club last night? Or just the lack of sleep…? Whatever it is, it is bringing me down. I don’t know how to get out of this funk. The circumstances that are at least partially responsible (infertility, uncertainty of the future, health questions) aren’t likely to go away anytime soon.
