The pleasure of a one pot meal, especially when recovering from too much fun lately

It's been a long week. Or rather, it's been a long three or four of them.

Let me start by saying that I'm the kind of girl who likes a lot of down time. I like to be able to squirrel away every few weekends all by myself with a few bottles of wine and new recipes. Just me, all by myself, doing whatever it is I feel like at any given moment in my little apartment with all of my things close by me. Too much fun, too much excitement will drive a girl like me to temporary seclusion. Call it lame. Call me old, or a loser. That's just me.

I've been running toward this hermit status for so long I don't even know how long it's been.

All I know is it really started when my parents decided to fly down to help me replace the carpet in my apartment.

My family has been bugging me since the day I moved in more than six years ago to get my apartment's management to replace the carpet. I always figured I was lucky they gave me a place to live, and never thought I'd stay long enough to make it work the effort. And, to me, the carpet never seemed so bad in the first place. But my family always figured I was paying enough in rent each month to warrant a pet free, stain free, fluffy new carpet.

The one defense I always used to support my laziness was that the whole carpet installation was just too much work for me to deal with, me a successful, working journalist with far more important things to worry about. At some point this past year my mom decided she was sick of this BS and volunteered to come down with my dad and do it for me. (You may call me spoiled. I call this the millennial generation. Read up on it.)

So about three weeks ago they descended on Sarasota, and more specifically my sacred little refuge. Before I knew it, they were in my apartment turning my nice, settled life of six years upside down, packing and stacking up all of the books, knick knacks and photos that hadn't been moved in years and piling them up in the kitchen. Before long, there was nothing left in my living room but the carpet stained by years of accidentally spilled red wine and coffee. (Before this whole ordeal began, my friend Elaine and I talked about kissing the old carpet good bye with a baptism by red wine. But then we realized the wine would be put to better use if we just drank it).

All of my belongings hovered in towers on the counters in my kitchen, my furniture lined up next to bed, when the carpet people showed up at 8:30 a.m. I stood watching them tear up my living room in some sort of trance as my mother shooed me out the door to the office. It's a rare event I get my butt to work before 10 a.m., and I think my editor found it amusing the new carpet installation was traumatizing enough to propel me so early into the office.

It really wasn't such a big ordeal. In fact, I got through it doing next to nothing. It was the whole metaphorical process of picking my whole life up, moving it around and leaving it unsettled and disorganized - if only for an evening - that I found so traumatizing. To me, a new carpet also felt like a commitment. It felt like I was pledging to stay in this very place a good chunk longer to make it worth the while. This was also all happening the week before school started, so I was stressed and busy at work trying to file a bunch of stories.

I walked into my apartment at the end of that day, already tired from my back to school preparations and terrified of what new projects my parents might have found to take on that morning. I immediately smelled the new carpet odor, and as I took the few steps down the hall to see my new carpet found myself smirking.

"So..." my mom said beaming from my living room as she put all of my personal belongings back in all the wrong places. "What do you think?"

She was so excited that for a brief moment I thought about just lying. Pretending like it was the greatest thing since manchego cheese or a bottle of Santa Alicia. But at that point I was already too tired, too overwhelmed and too drained. I just found the whole situation amusing.

"It looks ... well ... the same as the last one," I said laughing. "I guess it is cleaner."

I started moving methodologically through the apartment putting everything back in its proper place. For a moment I thought "Maybe this is the time I should just mix it all up. Leave it somewhere new. Aw hell. I'll just get to it later." We were up and doing random "projects" around the house all night. We finally finished to break for dinner at about 10 p.m.

Thus began all the fun, all the excitement, all the stress and lack of routine that has left me in the drained state I now inhabit.

Before they left the sunshine state, my parents took me to Disney, where we wandered around an amusement park in the August heat, ate with Remy (of Ratatouille fame) and at Wolfgang Puck's and Emeril's. They left me one Sunday, and I woke up the next day for the first day of class at a brand new high school at 7 a.m., when I had my Starbucks confiscated. Then ensued all of the 28th birthday celebrations, all of the Bobby Flay, chicken wing festivals, workouts with my brother and blog project shenanigans. Not to mention all the thinking and reflection that comes with every birthday.

I was drained when it all started and I was drained when I came back to Sarasota this week. It was all I could do to make it for two more birthday celebrations : ) After my friend Dan took me for a birthday drink (or three) at some point this week I knew I had it. I was in bed that night by 9:30. Somehow I made it to the weekend, muddling through all the tired and all the cranky that follows all of this over stimulation.

So one might believe it was good karma that after all these weeks of stress, fun and excitement, that I pulled a country with a national dish that amounts to not much more than a comforting and hearty chicken soup. What better way to kick back, get back in touch with yourself and relax your soul than chicken boiled and simmered in a pot with a bunch of yummy veggies?

I will admit that even as I write this I still don't feel like I've really taken a break, or as Jimmy Buffett once sang "a weekend off to try and recall the whole year." But an evening home in my comphies with a delicious one pot dish is a little closer than where I've been lately. I'm on to some more carmenere and carrot cake.

PS - Hope this was sufficient Emily! I am so fortunate to have friends who always point me in the right direction : )