Culinarily Illiterate

I'm culinarily illiterate.

That doesn't just mean I don't like to cook, or that I'm not a very good cook (although I'm not). It means I'm terrified of the kitchen.

The problem is that I not only married someone who loves to cook and who happens to be very talented at it, but who also comes from a family where food isn't just a passion, but an actual dialect. It's how you tell someone you love them. It's how you connect and share substance. The amount of care you put into planning a meal is a direct correlation to how much you care about the people you serve it to.

I come from a family where food wasn't all that important. For us, food is more sustenance than an expression of love. So the fact that yes, if I'm tired, a bowlful of Life cereal and milk seems like a perfectly acceptable dinner to me just does not compute for my poor spouse. Why is cooking so hard and frustrating for me, when it's one of the most sincere ways to him to show how much he cares?

The only people who truly understand this fear of cooking are other culinary illiterates. For people who like to or who are good cooks are completely confounded by this concept. Can't you read a recipe, they ask? Have you tried to learn? Why don't you like it?

Here's the thing: Culinary illiterates don't have the basic building blocks, so trying to follow any sort of blueprints don't make any sense to us. It's like trying to learn how to read without first knowing the letters of the alphabet. For me, it's like what happened to me in high school math. I never really got algebra II and trig, which made calculus a painstaking experience for me

This is what I mean. It's not that I don't know how to make a recipe. It's the things that AREN'T written in the recipe that terrify me. When do you cover the pot, or remove the cover? How do you get the oil to the right temperature so that you don't splatter it all over the @#$#$% stove and damn near start a grease fire every time you attempt to cook something? Are frozen shrimp actually cooked, or not? And can you refreeze shrimp, or will you run the risk of killing your family with some sort of evil food virus that you don't know about because you're culinarily illiterate???

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

That's exactly it. I don't know what I don't know, and it stresses me the heck out. What's relaxing for some has the exact opposite effect on me, and frustrates me to the point of tears. I need to do something to get over it. Maybe I'll look into a class. I'll have to do that. Just as soon as I put out this #$#$%$ grease fire.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

I'm tired.

And no, not because of the logical reason that has something to do with a six-month old. No, I'm tired because I'm not so smart.

I (stupidly) stayed up way too late. Partially because I was watching the Oscars, but moreso because I was accomplishing a few things, and it's very easy to get give into the desire of doing things when the baby's sleeping, because it's easy and oh so productive, but you know you're going to pay for it the next day.

Which makes you write in long, run-on sentences like that one. Which is great when you have a bunch of stuff to write at work today while you're really tired which means all of your stories are going to be really unnecessarily long and your editor is going love you because of all the editing the editor then has to do since your stories don't say anything other than lots of words, stuck together and pasted onto a page. I'd make a funny comment here about being William Faulkner but it just took me 10 minutes to remember his proper name, instead the moniker I was going to go with, which was "You know, that guy who wrote the long, run-on, crazy book about the bear, what was it called again, oh yeah, "The Bear," you know, the one from high school or college English class, which one was it again? Oh, oatmeal! I have oatmeal in my desk drawer! I'm going to go make some oatmeal..."

Yeah, it's going to be a productive day.

Dear Universe, I Get It, XOXO, Me.

I'm struggling at work right now, trying to dig myself out of some holes I've gotten into while trying not to fall into upcoming holes in the process. Ah, the cycle of fun.

To try and catch up, I worked late, to see if I could somehow get ahead of the snowball for just a few minutes (I didn't). When I told C. this, he, with the best of intentions, read me the riot act, explaining on how I was missing out on time with Baby (I was) and that time with my family is more important than any job (it is). And that he was just trying to help.

I tried to calmly explain that while I appreciated his helpful intentions (I did), he was really frickin' stressing me out further (he was). But I would do my best to get home soonest.

Still all wound up, while I was driving home, I turned on a sappy, way-too-soft-rock evening radio show that I hate to admit that I like (but do), in the hopes that I might unwind.

The song that came on? Harry Chapin's "The Cat's in the Cradle."

Dear Universe:

I get it.

xoxo,
me.

Georgetown Time Travel

I walked through the time the other night.

After dinner with a dear friend at Pizza Paradiso in Georgetown, I decided to walk down M Street to see if Lush was open, and if so, I'd buy some of their very cool, but very expensive, shampoo and conditioner. Besides, it was a nice night, and our dinner had been a quick one.

As I walked on that very nice night, the smells I encountered were like time travel. Maybe it was all the open windows and doors in the stores and restaurants. But suddenly, the smell of stale, old cigarettes wasn't bad, but a ticket back to high school gatherings in bowling alleys and the boys I wanted so badly to like me then. I thought of people I hadn't thought of in years, saw faces in my mind's eye as if I were passing them on the street. The smell of cigarette smoke reminded me of bowling alleys we hung out in during high school, when we couldn't sneak into any bars, and made me suddenly nostalgic for friends I hadn't seen or talked to in years, and even for the times and events of high school. This was particularly odd, as I didn't even like high school all that much. I didn't like the social structure, I didn't like myself very much, and I had a thimble full of the confidence than I have today (which, for anyone who knows me now, says a lot). But somehow, I suddenly missed driving to the beach while listening to the Cars, and playing miniature golf on the boardwalk with my crush of crushes in my little high school life.

I laughed when I passed the Izod store, with it's windows decked out in pique shirts with their collars up and whale print pants. Yeah, if they only knew we've so been there before.

As I passed Clyde's, the smell of stale beer didn't make me wrinkle my nose, but instead long for days lounging about at friends' fraternity houses, or running through the snow and the biting wind to wait on line to cram into six inches of space at 44's, where the music was too loud, the beer was cheap, the friends were there and there was always a hope of meeting and smiling at a cute boy. Who maybe, just maybe, might smile back.

A few Georgetown students walked by, talking to one another, trying to look so much older than their probably 20 years each, and I couldn't help but smile to myself. I'm still that high school kid in the varsity jacket, and that college kid with baggy sweater and jeans. And it's nice to go back and visit once and a while.