Further evidence that I am not normal

As.if.you.needed.any.

I’ve taken the last couple weeks of free time for myself, trying to enjoy the calm before the typhoon that is looming around the corner. A typhoon including academia, a possible move, and the impending end of our fiscal year at work. Instead of engaging in activities that a more normal person might, I relished every second of this time by immersing myself in reading FOR FUN. Can you believe the excitement around this place? Do I need to remind you yet again of how annoyingly bizarre and unexciting I am? I enjoy reading, I crave the time to do so, and very infrequently find it. So, when I happened upon this quieter time (quieter meaning the presence of only a dull roar), I read and read and read and read and read. So much so, that I think Craig contemplated just how to go about placing my face on a milk carton while wondering who this imposter was that had a neck with a paperback book attached to it.

Side note, I would highly recommend this one and should proclaim my disappointment a bit with this one.

The problem reading presents for me is that somehow it renders me utterly useless at writing. While on a normal day, my brain changes directions faster than Jon Gosselin changes girlfriends, reading makes me altogether ineffectual. I get so absorbed in the story, the era, the characters, and the setting, that it steals away any creative energy I have. So, when I sit down at my computer to write, I find myself an unfamiliar soul, writing in sync with the author I am currently reading. It is surreal and leaves me wondering who exactly the person that just wrote that was. Do you think they make a medication that could take care of this problem?

There is my excuse for being a lazy blogger.

Fortunately (unfortunately?) for you, the reading has ceased and maybe my wayward writing ability will make its way back home.

And more from the Domestic Goddess

One night last week, in a desperate attempt to feed my starving family, I popped an Amy’s frozen pizza into the oven. For the record, the term “cooking dinner” is a phrase I interpret fairly loosely. In the event that I claim to be cooking dinner, or having cooked dinner, you might want to check with Craig to see exactly what that entailed. Now, when I COOK gourmet pizza, I do so directly on the oven rack, since it gives it a nice, crisp crust. Craig prefers softer crust, but I stand firm in my stance that the one who slaves for hours, COOKING DINNER, gets to decide just how that process goes. The only downfall to this cooking method is that it often leaves a mess on the bottom of the stove if you forget to place an empty pan on the shelf underneath the cooking pizza. Not that I’d ever forget, but I am just telling you what would happen if I did.

I’m also not saying that I haven’t used my oven since last week when I cooked a frozen pizza for dinner. If you infer that from reading this post, I’m still standing by my story.

So, tonight I turn on the oven to cook some unnamed dinner accompaniment that will remained unnamed, least I further my tarnished reputation by following up pizza with what I made tonight. I eat healthy about 95% of the time and these two stories converge and draw attention to that remaining 5% quite well, don’t they?

As the oven is heating up to 450 degrees, which is of course a suitable temperature for cooking all things healthy, the pizza remains on the bottom of the stove start turning into lovely little carcinogen chucks. As expected, the smoke detector in the kitchen started to go off.

Immediately, I went into never-missing-a-teachable-moment mommy mode, as I realized Kate had never heard that noise before. The 60 Minutes episode of children sleeping soundly through smoke alarms flashed vividly in my mind.

“Hey Kate, do you know what sound that is?”

“What?”

“Do you know what that noise means?”

“Dinner is ready?”