You're Doing It Wrong

Last night traffic was a nightmare. (Apparently it’s a nightmare now, too, but I’m not out in it.) I ended up getting home late and by then Bob was already wrangling dinner so I decided not to do any prepatory cooking projects.

Then I woke up at 3am and was seized with the idea that the Brussels sprouts were ruined because I didn’t prep them. For a minute I considered getting up and doing it then, but I figured if they were ruined they were ruined and if they were fine, they would be fine 12 hours later and I fell back to sleep. (This is the recipe I’m making).

I managed to get home by 1:30 this afternoon and made my chocolate haupia and pumpkin pies. It made me a little bit grumpy because that pumpkin pie recipe had some hidden steps that I did not notice because I did not read the entire recipe in advance. Cool the pie crust completely? Define “completely.” “Cooled” melted butter? Isn’t that just butter? They’re finally done and look pretty.

I thought I’d just make one pie to keep things simple but then I decided that it’s Thanksgiving weekend and I want to be able to eat a piece of pie when I wake up and I want to eat a piece of pie before I go to bed and I don’t want to eat the same pie twice in one day. I think I might skip the rolls (I’ve decided yes/no several times over the past few days) but we’ll see how frisky I feel tomorrow.

We don’t eat too early and I’ve got a small turkey so cooking shouldn’t be too epic tomorrow.

Guess I just jinxed it.

Almost forgot to push the publish button today.

I’m a huge Cameron Crowe fan.

The last movie he made is called: We Bought a Zoo.

When I heard the title, I said: I’m not going to see a movie called We Bought A Zoo.

Based on title alone, I knew I would hate it.

Bob saw it with his Mom and he said he thought I should see it.

I said: I’m not going to see a movie called We Bought A Zoo.

Later he told me again that he thought I would like. I DVR’d it a couple of weekends ago, so I could watch the first 5 minutes and then tell him how I knew it would be stupid.

I started it over the weekend and I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and I love it.

Bob was right. Again.

It seems like I’m either frazzled or recovering from being frazzled.

I’m in the former right now. Will (hopefully) graduate to the latter on Sunday.

We bought a giant boring legal book for the office at a cost of $250.

Yes, that’s correct: $250.

It arrived yesterday. I just opened the box and inside there’s an envelope with a note that tells me that “due to an unfortunate publishing error” my copy is missing the current front matter. The forward and list of contributors. To remedy this they sent me a set of “complimentary” replacement pages. This in the form of 8 giant stickers that I’m supposed to paste over existing pages.

So to sum: “Hey, we charged you $250 for a book that we screwed up but we won’t charge you to fix it yourself.”

Last night at about 9:30 I went into the garage to put something into recycling and one of my hubcaps was gone.

I stood there gnashing my teeth for a few minutes while my brain reeled off scenarios, first for how it came to be missing, like maybe it was stolen or what stupid thing did I do now?

And then, what sort of giant clusterfark was it going to take to replace it? Searching hubcapsяus.com or a trip to Toyota where a grim-faced employee would explain that the stock hubcap for a 2001 Camry is now a collector’s item and better liquidate your 401k so we can get this process started.

Then I thought, why not just live without it. Who cares?

Except I do. I take good care of my things and every time I went out to my car and saw that it would make me mad.

Then I remembered that when I stopped at the dry cleaners earlier, I had taken that curb pretty hard. Maybe I should hop in the car and drive over there and see if my hubcap was sitting in the grass. I didn’t want to leave it until the next day.

Then I also remembered that driving home from exercise class I had heard a weird scraping noise. I figured it was a branch or something and did not investigate further.

“Bob! You have to help me find my hubcap.”

I found some flashlights. My husband, who was on his way to bed, went and put on his shoes. We walked toward the area where I’d heard the weird noise. Luckily it was on our street.

And there it was in the middle of the street waiting for me.

Finally, something went right.