Let it be known that on March 31st, Arley Cruthers officially achieved the status of Queen of Carbs. I’ve made cakes and pies and tarts and bread and basically every baked good under the sun, but there was one baked-good nemesis I couldn’t conquer: the carbohydrate Bowser at the end of my culinary Super Mario Bros, if you will. The simple pancake.

I’ve never been able to make pancakes. They’ve always been raw in the middle, burnt on the outside, burnt and raw, too thin, too thick or just plain gross. But today, I used a cast iron pan, and pancake victory was mine. Perfect pancakes! So easy! I felt very domestic, flipping flapjacks on my cast iron pan. Is there such thing as a Pandemic Merit Badge?

So, the pancakes were a hit. Dot ate 2! And then something else happened. For the first time in 20 days, my husband agreed to take Dot outside. Don’t get me wrong. I love our daily wanders, but I’m trying to work full-time and I have chronic pain, and it was nice to have a day’s reprieve. For the first time in 20 days, I was alone in the house. The silence was really strange. Instead of grading, I used my newfound glorious 45 minutes of freedom to….mop the floor. But, for a moment there was silence, gleaming floors that smelled faintly of grapefruit, and the sun shining in.

And then like 2 hours later my gleaming floors got covered in paint because a toddler wanted to paint and also wanted to make me look like Daniel Tiger. The biggest mystery was that she also carefully painted my nails. I don’t paint my nails. I have no idea where she picked this up, but she was very attentive. My first manicure since my wedding!

Arley's arm with tiger stripes painted n it, and painted "nails."