Random Thursday

1. I do dumb things.  I forget about them.  I wake at night, struck with the dumbness of what I've done and play them over and over in my mind.

Please tell me I'm not alone.

2. March is the biggest birthday month for me.

I have all the March birthday gifts lined up on my kitchen counter.  Weeks ago, I jokingly made it my goal to mail them before the month's end...

If you have a March birthday and you want to be my friend, we may have to agree to celebrate in August.

3. I've already composed Sunday's Cooking post.  It's very Karen.  Consider yourself warned.

For the record: food is not my life.

4. Charlotte was here yesterday, wearing her Vera Bradley glasses.  She's so pretty, and put-together.  And girly.

I heart her.

I can't help but wonder if she hangs around me for the entertainment value.  I'm generally comfortable being a bumbling wreck, but somehow it seems amplified next to her pretty, girly poise.  I usually have lingering regret for something I say or do during our time together.  I'm such a dork.

Yesterday, I sat on the kitchen floor and painted intake register grates while we chatted.  I have no lingering regret for that, even though I discovered this morning that the grates are painted to the newspapers I had set them on.

I hope the WH doesn't read this.

Yesterday, Charlotte helped me with the Dang Chicken, which I will tell you about in detail on Sunday.  After she left, I realized that I had dealt with the chicken in the kitchen sink and then not followed up with my Super Dooper Kills Raw Chicken Germs spray.  I have lingering regrets about that.  Yuck.

For the record: I cleaned it properly as soon as I realized my error.

Yuck.

Yesterday, when we were talking about what to do with the Dang Chicken, I had to confess that I am out of garlic.  I do have lingering regrets about that.  What kind of a cook runs out of garlic?  I felt like a fraud.

5.  I had a dream last night the Ree Drummond read this blog, took pity on all y'all, brought me to her ranch and set about teaching me how to take a proper photograph.

In the dream I kept pretending I didn't quite get this or that about aperture and bokeh and all those words she uses that might as well be Greek to me (name that play).

Don't tell her, but I totally got the photography lessons.  I was playing dumb so that she'd keep feeding me.

Food is not my life.

No, really.

6. For instance, it is 9:34 and I have yet to eat breakfast.

Well, except for coffee, the breakfast of champions.

And three gulps of the boys' (plumnectarineclementinebananastrawberryflaxseedyogurtalmondmilk) smoothie.

And the scrapings out of an empty peanut butter jar someone put back in the cupboard.

7. You don't realize it, but I left you for six hours.  I'm back!  I went shoe shopping with Charlotte and Jamie.  We went to DSW.

Do you think it's sacrilegious that when I walk into a DSW store the heavens open up, light shines down and I can hear angels singing?

No?

Good.

8. After DSW, where I had spectacular success (those angels weren't singing for nothing, people), we went to Pho 495, which is one of my all-time favorite restaurants.  It's a simple, unassuming place that packs every single one of my most favorite flavors on earth into one bowl of slurpy, sloppy goodness.  Charlotte and Jamie had Vietnamese coffee, but my heart was still kind of pounding from my breakfast (and possibly from the shoe-shopping high), so I passed.

For the record: Vietnamese coffee is one of life's greater joys.

Also for the record: This is the first visit to Pho 495 during which I did not have to do the walk of shame across the long, noisy restaurant to the front desk to ask for a fork.

7. Charlotte introduced me to Pho last year.  I was bowled over at the complexity of the flavors--onion and ginger, star anise and cilantro and fresh leaves of basil, topped off with jalapeno slices and a squeeze of lime--rolling around in my mouth.  I did not know such glory existed on this earth.

I was so excited that I took the Wonder Hub at our first opportunity, wanting to share this new love with my true love.

I was giddy as we tore our basil leaves.  We sprinkled our bean sprouts.  We added jalapeno slices and squeezed our respective limes.  We slurped.  My eyes rolled back into the depths of my skull.

He looked at me, rice noodles hanging out of his mouth, lifted one shoulder and made an "Eh" noise.

I was crushed.

I was crushed, because apparently, food is my life.