Kids and Pączki

Some days, I wonder why on earth I had kids.  Because they drive me frickin’ crazy!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, okay, that was a bit overly dramatic. 😛 I do love my kids.  They can be sweet and adorable.  Such as when this picture was taken on Monday.

Of course, that was when they were: a) eating pizza, which they love and I don’t offer them very often, and b) enjoying birthday cake, which they also love, and c) living off the high of DS#2 getting a Nintendo 3DS for his birthday. 😉

Other times, they are less than stellar. Such as earlier this week, when one or the other of them: a) left his lunch bag in his locker, b) forgot to turn in his homework, and c) outright LIED to me three times!!!

Yes.  Kids are fun that way. 😛

I totally lost my cool with my kids last night, because the forgotten homework was the Last. Straw.  I’m ashamed at just how badly I lost my cool, actually.  I can only hope that I have not scarred them for life and that, years from now, they will at least have a few fond memories of their childhood, revolving around all the hockey games I attended and the races I encouraged them to enjoy.

Okay, mommy whining over. 😉  Back to more fun things, like…Fat Tuesday!!!

Most people know that last Tuesday was “Fat Tuesday,” or Mardi Gras, in the Christian world.  My family is not Catholic, but we are Christian (Protestant), and my kids attend a Catholic school, so we’re pretty familiar with the whole “Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday” thing.

What most people may not know is that “Fat Tuesday” has a special meaning in the Metro Detroit area: it’s traditionally referred to as Pączki Day around here. You can Google it, but basically, a Pączki is a Polish jelly donut on steroids. 😉 And it is SO good!!  I love donuts, although I’m not really a fan of “filled” donuts, but on Pączki Day, I am a BIG fan! For me, it’s one day of the year when I eat what amounts to a great big “filled” donut, and enjoy every minute of it!

Tuesday morning, I got up and ran three miles, according to my Hal Higdon training schedule.  Um, except, when I came back in the house and looked at my schedule, I discovered I was wrong:

Ha! I ran an extra mile for no reason!! At 5:30am for God’s sakes!! 😛  When I realized I’d run an extra mile, I knew that it was God’s way of telling me to enjoy a pączki. 😉 Someone always brings a box of pączki in at my office, so I figured I’d just enjoy one when I got to work.  I made a comment to friends about having run three miles and therefore deserving at least half a pączki, and I was surprised at the responses.  So many of my friends were discouraging me…or perhaps they were discouraging themselves. Several folks commented on how they were specifically going to avoid them on Tuesday because Pączki were “bad” for them.

That kind of bothered me.  Are they good for you? Oh, God no! They’re about as bad for you as they can get!  But is it okay to have just one, on a special day that is specifically designated for them? In my opinion…heck yeah! I don’t go around eating pączki every day, for crying out loud! (I don’t even see them for sale any other time except for in the week leading up to Fat Tuesday!) I eat one on Fat Tuesday and that’s it.  So, for me, I felt like I was perfectly entitled to eat a pączki on Tuesday–especially after I’d run three miles that morning!

I got to work at 8am, all geeked about the pączki I would have.  But…but…no one brought any in!! 😮 I was a distraught. By 11am, I was desperate for a pączki. I earned it, for cryin’ out loud! So at noon, I left work and went to a bakery I had found online.  I actually had to stand in line…outside…in the cold!! But dammit…I got myself a pączki!

And let me tell you, I enjoyed every bite of that Bavarian creme pączki.  😀  I didn’t actually eat it all (I scooped out a lot of the filling, because I like the donut part more than the filling part), and I left the last couple of bites alone, but let me assure you that I felt completely justified and, more importantly, satisfied, for having eaten that pączki.  And, most importantly, I counted the points (as best as I could guess using my Google searching for the nutritional value–since Weight Watchers does not include “pączki” in their database!), and then…I moved on.  I didn’t eat four of them, and I didn’t splurge on anything else that day. I had a pączki, I counted it, and I moved on. And it was awesome!

So that’s my Fat Tuesday story.  I could go on and tell you about how I got up at 5am on Thursday and ran four miles before I even got the kids out of bed…but I won’t. 😉 Just suffice it to know that I am sticking with my half-marathon training plan, as well as my Weight Watchers plan, and that I will eventually come to a point when my kids go off to college and then I’ll miss them. 😉

Thanks for reading!