I'm Here...Whether You Like It or Not

When I started the Widow Chick blog, many moons ago, I put myself on a strict schedule of two blogs a week.  Now, that's not much when you're an angry, weepy single mom - there's always an audience for misery. 

But once you're happy...who wants to read that?

Well.  I don't know.  But I'm going to write anyway.

~

My living room rug looks like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk ate a family-size bag of Cheetos and then wiped his hands on it.

It's my own damn fault.  I assured the guy who came over to do an at-home "Canvas and Corkscrews" party that it would be totally fine to do it in that room.  After all, he covered every surface carefully with plastic.  We all wore aprons.  We were all so careful.

Until the bottle of orange decided to suddenly go topless on my rug.

I'm really not mad.  Seriously.  And as my friend Candice said, while her eyes roamed from the bright orange on my rug to the blood splattered stains that I still can't get off the wall after Halloween decals left their mark..."Damn, Cath.  You look like you have a lot of fun in this house."

Hell, yeah.

~

The lady at the nursery yelled at me today.

I was buying some plants for my house - looking for something unusual - and when I was checking out she was very carefully packaging my plants.

"Oh. you don't have to worry about that," I said.  "They're going straight into my car."

"These are tropical plants!" she said in, I think, a German accent.  In any case, she scared the crap out of me.  "It's 20 degrees outside!"

Which made me feel sure that I was walking these poor, defenseless leafed creatures to their death.

The only thing that made me feel better was the scared look of the woman behind me who was buying herbs.

~

I think there's something wrong with my broiler.

Or I don't know how to use it.

If I were you, I'd be bet on the latter.

For some reason, I've been experimenting with recipes that require "5 minutes under the broiler."  Is it winter?  We're all so ready for spring that we feel the need to quickly blacken meat in the oven because we miss doing it on the grill?

I don't know.

I started out with gorgeous steaks last week and the instructions asked me to "sear, add toppings, and then broil for 5-10 minutes."

I set them on fire.

Whatever.  

Stupid "peppercorn encrusted steaks."  I scraped that off and still ate you, didn't I?  And the kids were really excited to know that the fire alarms worked.

Tonight I tried a pasta recipe in the latest Food Network magazine.  Now, I'm not always the best a reading the instructions all the way through, but I swear there were a few steps missing.

Anyway, I wasn't too happy to fire up the broiler once again, but I thought that surely, putting it in for the minimum time, all would be okay.  And this is how it turned out.

 Oh.  Wait.  That's what it was supposed to look like.  Here's mine.

Please note the extra sprinkling of cheese on top to hide the "crust" from my kids so they would eat it.

Yes.  That's how I roll.  Everything can be fixed with extra cheese.