In honor of the nation’s birthday, there will be no post today. Anyway, I know nobody would be here to read it, so what’s the point? No reason to keep the shop open for my own sake.
Instead, lets enjoy the outdoors, eat some wonderful food, and celebrate the only holiday that encourages you to blow things up.
-The Management
On this, the day of my 8th anniversary to my lovely wife, I would like to talk about one of my failings, and one of the reasons why she must never leave me (or maybe one of the reasons why she might want to leave me). No two ways about it, I am a terrible cook.
This happens to be one of Sara’s strong suites, so it works out pretty well. One of those complimentary things that makes marriage work I guess. On the other hand, since cooking comes pretty naturally to her, I think my inability to cook is somewhat baffling to her.
When I say that I can’t cook, I don’t mean that I am unable to cook, and certainly I don’t mean that I don’t want to cook. But for some reason, I am just bad at it, and apparently cannot improve past my current sorry ability. Inevitably there is always some kind of disaster that leaves something wrong with the meal. Either something is burned, or something is under-cooked. Either an ingredient was left out, or accidentally doubled. All of it with equal likelihood. I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly that I do wrong, but somehow, it always turns out wrong.
Every time I cook it always seems like a one time thing that didn’t work out. “Oh, well this burned because I had to deal with such and such at just the wrong moment,” or, “Well, of course that didn’t turn out, but there were extenuating circumstances!”, etc. But there’s always a one time thing, every time, so at some point I have to admit that it’s never going to work out.
First off, I get flustered in the kitchen. Suddenly I have terrible time management and multi-tasking abilities for no reason. It’s like I can’t manage two things at once, even though I normally don’t have a problem with that. It doesn’t even seem like it should be that hard, but then again, maybe I just feel uncomfortable in the kitchen because I know it is going to turn out wrong somehow.
I honestly think that it is a culmination of all the little things that go into cooking that I just don’t have a gut feel for. Some parts of the recipe you can play around with a little bit, and some you can’t. Some measurements can be loose, some must be precise. Some things can be left to sit on the stove for a minute, and some must be watched very carefully. I consistently misjudge which is which. I don’t understand standard measuring conversions. I think I’m also impatient with cooking, which leads to me skipping tedious but important steps. I don’t take the time to chop things fine enough, or to let the pan heat up enough, or I turn the burner up too high, which doesn’t give the middle enough time to cook. I forget to set the timer, I use the wrong utensil/pot/substitution for the job, and I don’t have a fundamental feel for how long things need to microwave. Whatever it is, I think I just consistently make a thousand tiny little mistakes which culminate in some larger mistake.
But that’s the part that is frustrating to both me and Sara: why don’t I just stop doing that? All of these things seem like the kind of mistakes you make when you’re just learning to cook. With enough experience, you should be able to move past that, right? But at this point in my life, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m just not ever going to get any better.
I suppose that cooking is a skill, and it stands to reason that some people are better at some things, so there must be some people who are worse at some things. But it’s frustrating because cooking basic meals doesn’t seem like such a hard skill, and I think the vast majority of people are able to master it up to at least a certain level.
I much prefer baking, which is more like performing chemistry then cooking. Ingredients are added precisely according to a recipe, and if you always follow that recipe exactly, you will always get the same result. There is usually only limited opportunity for error: it’s not particularly dependent on timing, and the heat is constant and controlled by a computer chip in the oven. So, there’s less pressure, and consequently I enjoy it more.
I suppose all of this makes me sound like some kind of cooking half-wit who’s lucky not to stab himself in the eye while boiling water. That’s not really the case. Instead, I would say that I specialize in making delicious meals with one flaw each. (How does that go? Imperfection is beauty?) But, whether I am passable at it or not, I can safely say I do not enjoy cooking, that is for sure.
So, cooking, I think this is it. It’s just not working out. We’ve had some good times, but at the end of the day we just weren’t made for each other.
I finally realized, it’s not you, it’s me.
Sara: “Was he an adult or a teenager?”
Evie: “Well, I guess he must have been a teenager, because teenagers do silly things.”
In case you were wondering, the “teenager” in question was a 50ish homeless man, and the silly thing in question was prancing around naked in a public bathroom.
Sara: “Would you like to draw a picture?”
Oliver: “I would like to draw a holiday card for Darrel.”
The only thing he was missing was a “pip pip!”
Oliver: “I’m going to draw a new lip.”
::starts coloring on his chin with a crayon::
Okay, maybe he’s not so sophisticated after all!
Okay, I have spent entirely too much time on Better Book Titles. The formula is simple: re-title a book with something a little more descriptive or appropriate, and photoshop the new title onto the cover of the book.
The best ones are when they take a title from one book or movie and put it on the book it should have titled in the first place. I have literally spent hours looking at these, but for some reason Sara does not enjoy them. I don’t know how many I called her over to see. “Check out this one!” I would say, pointing and chuckling, only to have her shrug uninterestedly and say, “I don’t know, it’s just not for me I guess.”
Don’t be like her, go enjoy these. Here are some of my favorites:
Ah, that magical moment in every little girl’s life, when she first sees a naked homeless man.
We had only recently arrived at a park we don’t normally go to, when Evie insisted that she needed to go to the bathroom. “Why didn’t you go before we left?” I asked. “Because I didn’t have to go then!” replied every child since the dawn of time. Luckily(?), there was a small stone building of the kind that can only mean ‘Outdoor Public Bathroom that is Semi-Occasionally Cleaned’, so I started in that direction, daughter in tow.
As we got closer, I heard the distinctive noise of a shower. “Hmm, that’s kind of weird, they have showers in the park bathroom?” I thought. In retrospect, this was probably ridiculous, but the bathrooms reminded me of nothing so much as the bathrooms at a campground or state park, which do often have showers. So my brain failed to send up the proper warning flags. “Hmm, that’s kind of weird, there’s shoes and socks in the open doorway?” I wondered. But we find all kinds of clothes all over the place all the time in our neighborhood, so that didn’t jump out at me either. There was a bright pink girls shirt that sat in our parking lot for two weeks until I threw it in the dumpster. There used to be a power line down the street with an entire collection of shoes hanging on it. So again my brain failed to send up the proper warning flags.
“Hmm, that’s kind of weird, there’s a naked man standing in the bathroom even though there is clearly no shower in here, and the door which leads outside to the public park is standing wide open where anybody could walk by or even walk right in holding the hand of a 4 year old girl.”
To give him credit, he seemed more surprised and embarrassed than we did. I find that odd. I mean, if I were taking a shower in the sink completely naked in a public bathroom with the door open, I would probably be nervous and jumpy, expecting someone to walk in at any minute. On the other hand, maybe the people who frequent this park know better than to go into the bathrooms, so maybe he takes a nice relaxing sink-bath every day with no fear of anybody barging in on him. And anyway, I guess I shouldn’t really try to put myself in his mindset, because probably if I were taking a shower in the public bathroom sink, I would probably just remove my shirt or something, and not get completely naked. But that’s just me.
We beat a hasty retreat and found the women’s bathroom instead. Of course this meant I had to wait outside while Evie went in to take her sweet time. You would think this might be the end of the story, but unfortunately the man quickly put on his shorts and then came outside to chat with me, sans shirt.
“I’m really, really sorry about that.”
“Oh, that’s okay, no problem.”
“Well, did she see anything?”
::please tell me I’m not having this conversation::
“No, I think she’s okay.”
“Well, as long as she didn’t see anything.”
::please oh please oh please let this conversation end::
“I think she’s fine.”
I have no idea if she saw anything or not. And I mean really, what’s the worst case scenario? Her life will not be ruined by seeing a naked man. Her mind will not be shattered. Let’s not forget that for the past three quarters of a year there has been a naked boy running around the house every evening, and she’s been able to cope with that.
Suddenly, the man looked at me with deadly seriousness. “If this were football season, I’d have to have words with you.”
Realization dawned on me that I was wearing a Packer’s shirt and ball cap, and this man did not approve. “Evie, please hurry it up in there, I do not want to be knifed by a homeless man!!”, I thought. I mean, look, he probably wouldn’t have knifed me. He was barely wearing any clothes, so he probably didn’t have his homemade shiv on him at the moment. Besides, the Bears/Packers rivalry is just good natured fun, right? It’s not like we’re in Philly. On the other hand, this is a man who was standing naked in a public place. He probably isn’t the last word on proper behavior.
(Side note, I would think that if you had a place to watch the Bears’ games, you would have a place to take a shower, no?)
I found some excuse to dart into the women’s bathroom on the pretense of helping Evie (“What’s that honey, you need help reaching the soap?”), physically speeding her out of the bathroom. I gave him a nod as I dragged Evie by the arm back to the safety of the playground as fast as I could go and still maintain my “oh yeah, I’m totally cool with chatting with half-naked dudes I don’t know (who a very short while ago used to be completely-naked dudes I don’t know) outside of public bathrooms about our favorite sports teams” nonchalance.
This is one of those parenting moments they don’t teach you about in books.
Shane Halbach 