Wednesday morning: For the last few weeks I've been going to a hip-hop exercise class at the CRWC (the big, fancy, awesome gym on campus). It's not very far from my house, and I usually ride my bike but this Wednesday I needed to go get groceries right after, so I had to drive over. Ok, I am from a small town. We don't have to pay to park. Ever. You just park where there's a spot and you only get a ticket if you parked where the curb is yellow or if you parked in the teacher's lot and you're not a teacher. And even then I highly doubt you'd actually get a ticket. Anywho, there is a parking lot right by the gym that you have to pay for and then there is metered street parking, if you prefer that. Normally I do prefer street parking. But I was kind of in a hurry so I decided to just try out the lot and suck it up and pay for it. Everything went well until I had to leave. There are multiple exits to this lot, but only one is the "public exit". Apparently all the others are VIP exits, or something like that. The "public exit" has two lanes that lead to the outside world. One was obviously a cashier window and the other just had a small box by it. For whatever reason I thought it was just one of those self-checkout things, with a swipy thing for a credit card. So I pulled up to and then sat for minutes upon minutes (ok it was probably like 30 seconds) and stared at this box. I came to the unfortunate realization that it was not for credit cards. It was for some fancy-pants secret card. Which I did not have. The girl in the cashier booth opened up her sliding window and asked me if I had that fancy-pants secret card. I told her I did not. She said I'd have to back out and come around to the other side. Nooooo problem. Except that there was a ridiculously long curb/median in between the lanes. Why? Why would they put that there? It made my embarrassing moment multiple times more embarrassing because I had to slowly back out of that long lane (and yes, I did run into the curb. Twice) and then drive up to her window. To top it off, as I paid her my $2, in quarters, I dropped one of them on the ground. This brought on a rather sympathetic look from her as she said "It's ok. I will get it later. You can just go." Thank you, cashier lady. I really did not want to get out of my car and pick up that quarter. That was enough embarrassment for those 10 minutes, thank you very much.
A little bit later Wednesday morning: Hy-Vee on a weekday morning doesn't have too much potential for embarrassing one's self. Yet somehow I managed. In the cheese aisle, I maneuvered my way past a Hy-vee worker who was smiling, pushing boxes and chatting with some other workers further down the aisle. As I start scanning the wall of cheese to figure out what I need, the aforementioned worker turned to look back into the aisle and said "Need some help?" I thought she was talking to me so I instantly responded "No thanks, I'm good." It took me a good 3 seconds before I realized she had been asking the other workers, the ones she had just been chatting with, and not me. I'm pretty sure she chuckled a bit before walking away, and it wast rude or anything, but nonetheless I think I turned a not-so-lovely shade of pink. I wouldn't be surprised if all the friendly smiles in that aisle at that moment were a result of my eager response to a question not even directed to me.
I realize these things (and the ones I decided not to tell you about) are all fairly small, insubstantial moments of embarrassment. But never fear, I told you earlier that I eventually did make a big mistake and I stick to my word. So here comes the big shebang.
Since I had just gone to the grocery store, which meant I finally had more food than cereal and goldfish, and I didn't have night class until 7 pm, I figured it was the perfect time to make a legit meal. I wanted to stick to my usual pasta and chicken, but decided to be a little adventurous and try and make a marinade for the chicken so it wouldn't dry out if I left it in the fridge for a few days. I found a simple recipe made of red wine, olive oil, scallions, garlic and salt. And since I had 3 out of these 5 ingredients, it was a perfect match. I poured the red wine and olive oil in the saucepan to get it boiling and, as the recipe told me, boil it for 10 minutes. At the same time I was cooking pasta, cutting chicken and slicing a tomato (with different knives! Don't worry.) The marinade did eventually start to boil so I stirred it a bit and then let it boil, thinking the alcohol would mostly evaporate and it'd turn out perfect. Except then it exploded. And not a little explosion. A huge, splattered-red-wine-all-over-my-kitchen, kind of explosion. Thankfully I was not standing close to it, so I only got a few hot drops on my arm. But my cupboards, stove, floor and ceiling were not so fortunate.
The weirdest part, besides me not understanding exactly how it exploded, was that it had been on the back burner, which is underneath the shelf that holds the microwave...so how on earth did that cursed oily liquid manage to curve around and splatter my high cupboards and ceiling?? I just don't understand.
I was able to make the floor less red-wine-y, so now it's just oily. And I wiped it off every horizontal surface and off most of the cupboards. Unfortunately the textured ceiling is still proving to be an obstacle. I just bought a magic eraser, so I'll be giving that a try during my one-woman cleaning party that is supposed to happen after I write this blog. Otherwise I may end up pulling a Michelangelo and repainting my entire kitchen celling. That sure sounds like a fun Christmas vacation project.
So there you have it, the story of how I succeeded at following Mrs. Bryant's advice. At least I didn't catch anything on fire. That was last weekend...when I almost burned down Emma's birthday cake. You're probably assuming I just almost left it in the oven too long. But you would be wrong. I actually almost burned it down when we were lighting it and she was about to make her birthday wish. The bigger the flame, the more likely the wish is to come true. Right?
I will end on a good note because right now it sounds like all I do in my life is make mistakes. Last night I successfully made adorable mini stuffed peppers. No burning, no explosions and they tasted delicious. And all around success. Oh and on Thursday I presented one of my research projects at our lab meeting and it went even better than I expected. So I guess that also kind of makes up for the whole kitchen-explosion thing :)
As always, thanks for sharing in the overall excitement that is my life!
Happy weekend. Stay warm.
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