The Junk Drawer

In case of donut emergency, call husband.

In case husband laughs at wife’s misery, post on blog.

Anyone who knows me knows I can’t cook. Never really tried. Didn’t get the gene.

But after enjoying a delicious meal at the home of Kim and Bryan, the bloggers I met last weekend, I decided I might like to try my hand at it. You see, Kim made homemade manicotti, including making the pasta shells from scratch!

I thought it would make a nice birthday dinner for my husband, Dave, and so I slaved away in the kitchen making my own pasta. You do it by pouring a thin mixture of eggs, flour, water and oil in a saute pan and swirling it around like you would a crepe. When the top dries, you simply pop it out on a plate and instant pasta!

I made 15 of those beauties and confidently went on to make the cheese filling and meatballs. Didn’t they turn out nice? Thanks for the recipe, Kim!

I basked in the glow of knowing that if I apply myself, I can pull off a decent meal and no one even has to go to the emergency room to get their stomach pumped.

And then God said "Get over yourself. It was a fluke."

The very next day I made a grilled cheese sandwich in the brand new saute pan I’d bought to make the pasta in, but didn’t wind up using.

When the pan heated, I started smelling something. I chastised my husband for not cleaning some burned food off the stovetop.

But the smell wasn’t exactly burnt food. Oh, no.

It was the smell of stupid.

We had a good chuckle over it, took this picture for proof a moron lives here and I ate my grilled cheese sandwich.

The very next day I was making an omelette in the very same pan.

Hmmmm. What’s that smell?

That’d be the smell of short term memory loss.

You’ll be happy to know I finally took the paper off the bottom of the pan and my house doesn’t smell like burning barcode anymore.

Is this universe’s way of telling me to get the hell out of the kitchen and leave it to the experts?

Yeah, I thought so.

Been three weeks since the day we became one.

Three weeks of sheer torture.

I wake up to it.

I shower with it.

I cook with it.

I go to work with it.

It’s with me right now.

It haunts me.

It’s sneaky. It’s merciless. It’s painful.

It may never leave.

But I don’t want it.

And I can’t take it.

I want peace.

I need to quiet the voices in my head!

The voices of ….. The Pointer Sisters.

Yeah, the song I heard over a grocery store speaker three weeks ago.

They’re. Still. Here.

Someone once told me the best way to rid yourself of an earworm is to give it to someone else.

Else, it’s all yours:

Do you hear me?! I AM AWESOME! I recently posted that I was meeting up with some fellow bloggers 200 miles from home, and it would be the first time I ever drove such a distance by myself.

Sure, I was pee-in-my-pants scared getting there, but the way home was an absolute breeze. After a short time, I was whizzing by slow poke drivers, eating a box of chocolates off my lap, steering with my thumb, and cursing at all the amateur drivers who annoyed me because they seemed lost and inept. You know, like I was two days before. My, how I’ve changed.

The weekend with Kim, Bryan and Jenn was a laughfest and what a joy to finally meet them after a year of knowing them only through their blogs and emails. Kim and Bryan were the consummate hosts and Jenn was fun company at the B&B where we both stayed.

As a bonus, Bryan’s hilarious sister Lisa traveled over an hour to visit with us, along with her cutie pie son, who upon meeting me tried to ride my leg while I was sitting on the couch. I considered it a high honor.

Let’s review some random trip details, shall we?

1. A deer saw me naked. Freshly showered, I stepped out of the bathroom, turned to a window that faces the woods and saw this. I decided it was OK because he didn’t snicker or call over any of his deer buddies to get a look. In fact, he stared a long time. I think he wanted me.

2. Even though I took my cell phone, I lost reception during the return trip and later learned that a "reboot" would fix it. Until that discovery, I had to find a pay phone to call home. I found one on a desolate road, but some guy was using it and wouldn’t hang up! Why? Why would you talk on a pay phone in the middle of nowhere for ten minutes? I figured he was saying "There’s a lady here who looks desperate to use this phone, so I’m gonna keep talking about nothing, OK?" Jerk.

3. It took me three weeks to lose four pounds before my trip. I gained the four back in three days. I won’t be eating again until Thursday. That oughtta do it. 

4. I don’t get out enough. Kim planted some lovely Lamb’s Ears in her front lawn. I’ve never seen them before, and after Jenn told me "Feel ’em, they’re velvety soft," I stooped down to touch every Lamb’s Ear I encountered from then on. I’m not sure if everyone thought that was endearing or just sad. I’m guessing sad.

5. Kim needs her own cooking show. In the span of a day, she made homemade soup, homemade bread and homemade manicotti and meatballs. My version of homemade means "I made water boil and dumped a box of pasta in it, in my home."

6. I overpack. It’s a disease. On checkout day, my fingers slipped and I dropped my suitcase flat and it almost blew a hole in the floor and killed Jenn in the room underneath. When will I learn I only ever need half of what I think I need? 

7. Bryan agreed, at my request, not to take any photos of me. Yes, yes, I need therapy. He decided instead to take pictures of only my feet at various places we visited. Check out his foot photologue for proof I was actually there.

8. I hope someone located this lost baby. I found a "Missing" flyer taped to an ice cream shop window, but I can’t figure out why the baby would be wearing a collar and a harness. And only a $50 reward? That’s shameful. 

9. All of my pictures of the beautiful Pennsylvania Grand Canyon look like this. Each one features a view-obstructing railing because I refused to step any closer. Railings good. Falling hundreds of feet to my death bad. I thought it best to enjoy the pictures that others took; people who aren’t afraid to live close to the edge. Literally.

So there you have it. The trip I made all by my lonesome awesome self!

Next up? I fly alone for the first time this summer, wherein I’ll cry for two hours, clutching my blankie and teddy bear. Or maybe not. Awesome people don’t need no stinking teddy bears!

Do you have a monkey butt? If you do, I’m very sorry. But don’t worry. Apparently there’s a product on the market to cure your ill. I found this stuff at my local Rite-Aid pharmacy and gasped when I saw it.

It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to mock, but I’m also guessing people actually need it and buy it. Kudos to the company for trademarking "Monkey Butt." I would have loved to sit in on the marketing meeting where the name was suggested and agreed upon.

And, yeah, I took pictures right there in the first aid aisle. Luckily I was wearing my Blogger Press Pass. It helps if you look official.

Next weekend I’m taking my first ever road trip alone. This should worry every single one of you, for I am The Queen of Getting Lost. You earn that title by losing your way only two tenths of a mile from your house.

Despite that, I agreed to drive 180 miles to meet up with three of my favorite bloggers, Bryan of Unfinished Rambler, his wife Kim of Dispatches from the Outpost, and Jenn of Cabbages and Kings.

For the record, I have never driven alone more than 30 miles from my home.

Am I nervous? Yes. Is my husband nervous? Crazy more. Have I considered all the things that can go wrong from here to there? Only since the day I agreed to this insanity.

But for every problem, there is a solution.

1. What if I get lost only ten miles from home? Solution: Turn around, shake my head, and ask myself why I thought I could do this.

2. What if the GPS breaks? Solution: See if I can finish navigating with my Mapquest directions.

3. What if the GPS breaks and my Mapquest directions get sucked out a window? Solution: Call my husband to come get me.

4. What if the GPS breaks, my Mapquest directions get sucked out a window, and my cell phone dies? Solution: Pull over and commence meltdown.

5. What if the GPS breaks, my Mapquest directions get sucked out a window, my cell phone dies, I have a meltdown and nobody stops to help me? Solution: Lock the doors, sleep in my car and have a nightmare about all the murderers waiting for a sitting duck like me, in which case this will be my last post. It was great knowing you.

If I do actually make it there, I likely won’t blog during the weekend. But I will tweet and update on Facebook. So check there next Friday afternoon to see if I’m alive.

If I’m a no-show, send a search party. I’ll be sobbing quietly somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania.

Pssst! I have a secret. I’ve discovered a quirky, little-known game that’s played every year at Harvard commencement. It’s a game anyone can enter. All you have to do is show up and buy a ticket to get in.

Here’s how you play:

1. Show up within one hour of the ceremony. If you check-in between 11AM and Noon, it costs you $20 to get in. If you show up later, you have to pay $50. But half of that goes to financial aid fundraising, so it’s still worth it.

2. The neat thing is you can get part or all of your entrance fee back by looking for randomly-placed graduates eating cheeseburgers in their seats.

3. The game is played by taking pictures surreptitiously of up to three people eating cheeseburgers and presenting your photos to an appointed judge. Any picture showing a graduate who spots you taking the picture doesn’t count.

Each valid picture is worth a certain dollar amount off the price of admission. For example, if you have one cheeseburger picture, it’s worth $5 off. If you have two, you get $10 off. If you achieve the trifecta of cheeseburger picture-taking, it’s worth $20 off.

You can see that if you arrive between 11AM and Noon, and paid only twenty dollars to get in, you can possibly get a refund on your entire ticket price!

Aside from the chance to earn back your entrance fee, the photo judged the best is signed by the university president and gets displayed outside her office for a week. And you get monster bragging rights!

Do you believe me? You shouldn’t, because this is just one more bizarre dream I’ve had in a long line of dreams I tend to have as a result of seeing or hearing things before my head hits the pillow.

How this dream came to be:

1. I watched a show on the Travel Channel called Extreme Pig Outs, wherein some pub makes a 15lb. (6.8kg) cheeseburger and if anyone manages to eat it, they get their name on a plaque and eat free at the establishment for the rest of their lives.

2. I fell asleep watching an episode of Gilmore Girls, wherein daughter Rory announces she wants to go to Harvard.

3. I watched the Kentucky Derby, wherein longshot Mine That Bird stole the race at 50-1 odds and paid $103.20 on a two dollar bet. A trifecta win paid a whopping $41,500.60.

It’s possible my next post will be about me writing a post about a dream I had that led to writing a post. Or maybe after reading this, you will.

We have a winner! Blogless Donna was the first to guess that the What’s That Wednesday item was the stake of a landscape light. Donna’s been trying for some time to win a Junk Drawer magnet, so it’s my pleasure to send her one, along with a mystery prize: a box of bacon Band-aids!

I’d love to show you what the lights look like in my lawn, instead of on the floor with my cat, Shadow. But I never did figure out how to install them.

I remember when I bought them at Home Depot. A guy standing next to me said "Oh, those are really easy to put in" and I believed him. It didn’t take me long to discover they would be a pain to install and my husband never wanted them bad enough to do it for me. So they sit unused in our garage.

Anybody who lives near me want them? Email me if you do and I’ll be glad to part with them free of charge. There are 10 in the box.

Now, about that panic attack. I wanted to post a picture of Windy because she’s being swallowed up by new leaves on her tree. When I went out on the roof to take a picture, I COULDN’T FIND HER!

I always know right where to look in her tree. I just saw her a couple days ago and she was easy to spot. But when I couldn’t see her today I panicked and ran around to three other vantage points to see if I could get a better angle.

Nothing!

I went back to my office and a colleague of mine asked if I was all right. My sullen face said it all.

"I can’t find Windy!"

"Let’s go look."

We went to a couple spots: the steps, the third floor window, and then finally out on the roof again. We decided to zoom in with the camera as much as possible and see if we could spot her in the picture.

Here she is, limp and lifeless, and for the first time ever, I have to use an arrow to show you where she is. It rained today and I think that’s why she looks so bad.

Yes, I know it makes me insane to worry about a bag. But if you’ve been following her as closely as I have, you’d know what a loss it will be when she’s gone. Windy, don’t scare me like that!