Shout out to Abe

Before I go on and on about my cooking school woes like I usually do, I just have to give a shout out to Abe. Today he broke the record at Qualtrics for first year sales! Previously the record was held by a highly experienced salesman Qualtrics recruited away from another company. We attribute Abe’s success to both his hard, hard work and the goodness of God in helping him through a career change. It was very humbling for Abe to have to start over completely from the bottom over a year ago, and I’m so proud of him for exercising so much faith and working so hard for our family.

Onto my complaints about school. Today I met one of my classmates who happened to be crying in the library. She had just gotten done talking to the head chef about how badly our restaurant chefs have treated her. As bad as I think I have it, the chefs have been waaaaay harder on her, and it hurts worse because she is one of the school’s most talented students. The chefs have not let her cook for almost half of the quarter (at most, everyone else has only worked front of the house two weeks), and they told her they don’t want her in their kitchen anymore. She attributes their behavior to sexism, but I tend to think it all relates to the arcane pedagogical methods, complete disinterest in students,  and lack of introspection on the chefs’ part. We bonded a ton over our mutual woes.

On the home front, I had the best day I’ve had in weeks! I felt barely nauseous at all, and I had a lot of fun with the kids. I even let the girls do a craft from Lydia’s favorite show, Creative Galaxy. The message of that show is that all problems can be solved with art. Abe finds it really irritating, but I like the ideas at the end of each episode for art projects at home. One of the easiest involved making a picture out of cut-up pieces of fruit. Since I actually felt good today, I let the girls do that. Mary just ended up eating the fruit, but Lydia made a “picture” on her plate. I felt like I’d done my good-mom part for the day.

IMG_0241While I was at school, Abe and the girls played “doctor” with Lydia’s new doctor kit. Here’s a picture:

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