Today is Thanksgiving, and I’ve got lots to be thankful for. I’m thankful, for example, that I survived yesterday’s litany of home improvement disasters.
It’s an old story. It’s Thanksgiving Eve. I get off work early, the kids get home early, the hubby gets off early. I’ve got the entire afternoon and evening laid out before me. With the impending holiday madness, this would be a great time to get a little preemptive relaxing done! So do I settle in with a good book and cup of hot chocolate? No. Do I curl up on the couch and watch one of the 12 movies I’ve tagged on Netflix? No. I make the classic mistake of thinking, “I’ve got PLENTY of time”. Will I ever learn??
It started innocently enough. With all that spare time, I’d make two desserts: one for the house we’re visiting for Thanksgiving dinner and one for the house we’re visiting for dessert. I’d stick with the simple go-to desserts that I always make: a batch of Fudgy Oats cookies and a Chocolate Chip Cheesecake. Easy peasy. Now that I’d decided what I was making, I felt like I was practically done already!
But all of you experienced bakers out there know what happens next. When you’ve got lots of time on your hands, don’t you ALWAYS decide that the kitchen needs a good cleaning before you get started?? I don’t know, as I type this, it seems like such a stupid thing to do. I mean, I know I’m about to make a certifiable disaster of my kitchen. So wouldn’t it make sense to bake first and then clean up the cumulative mess after? But no, somehow the first step in the baking process is always to clean the kitchen. And it’s not just a quick clearing of the day-to-day rubble. No, this is the deep cleaning that involves mixing up a batch of my favorite homemade cleaner, moving the microwave to clean underneath it, and reorganizing the spice cabinet. Why? Why??? When I know I’m going to spend 2 exhausting hours on my feet baking, why do I feel the need to spend 2 exhausting hours cleaning first? It’s bizarre.
So after scrubbing down every flat surface of my kitchen, I was finally ready to cook. And the “baking inflation” had begun. Remember that I was going to make a cheesecake and a batch of cookies? Well, in the 2 hours that I spent cleaning, I came up with a couple of GREAT ideas. A double-batch of cookies was the first. Since my kids love these particular cookies and they’ve got friends coming over later this week, obviously I needed to make a double batch. Second great idea: I had all this citrus fruit sitting around, thanks to a delicious fundraiser. Obviously I needed to make a citrusy dessert too! And then a third brilliant idea came to me when I opened the fridge and saw that I accidentally bought eggs twice this week: deviled eggs! I mean, I’m going to a feast where I know the hostess traditionally cooks enough food to feed all of her guests, and their friends, relatives, neighbors, postmen, dog walkers, and coworkers. So obviously I needed to bring an appetizer. Makes perfect sense, right?
But before I started cooking, there was just one more little thing I needed to do. I had bought a new towel ring for the bathroom to replace one that broke last week. I knew it would be a quick install. I just knew it. So I ran out to the garage and grabbed a screwdriver. The old screws came out easily. See, this was going to be a piece of cake! But, of course, the holes for the new one didn’t line up with the existing holes. Dang it. Now I needed to drill another hole. So I went back to the garage and hunted around until I found the drill. After drilling the new hole I popped in one of the anchors, and then put another anchor in the existing hole. Uh oh. It wouldn’t go all the way in. The hole was not deep enough. So I took the drill to it, but it was hitting something hard - evidently there’s a stud quite a ways back in the wall. Weird, but OK. I decided to drill a little deeper, but then the drill ran out of battery. So I went back to the garage and hunted around for the other battery. Once I found it, I went back to my drilling, but after about 2.3 seconds, that battery died too. So back to the garage again to find the charger. Once I got it plugged in and the battery charging, you’d think I’d take the universe’s hint and give up on the home improvement for tonight. But no. More on that later.
So at 9:53 I started making the cheesecake. It needed to bake for an hour, so in my mind, I envisioned finishing the mixing and putting it in the oven at 10:00, and then I’d have an hour to kick back and relax while it baked. Sigh. It’s funny, because I’m an eternal pessimist, except that I also have a streak of wildly over-the-top optimism. I really believed in my little vision. At 10:14 I finally put the cheesecake in the oven. And then I turned to the mountain of dirty dishes spoiling what was so recently a very clean kitchen, and spent the next 15 minutes restoring things to their pristine state. Ahh, finally. It was time to relax. But then…
I wanted to retire for the night with a home improvement win, so I decided to take down the old toilet paper holder, since I’d gotten a new one of those too. The first screw came out easily, but the second one just spun around in the hole and didn’t come out. I put some pressure on, and it came out a little ways, but then it stopped again. So I put some more pressure on it, but instead of coming further out, the screw bent. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. No matter how hard I worked at it, that screw was just not coming out. So I resorted to tugging and rocking it back and forth, and finally the entire anchor came out of the wall, with about a half inch circle of sheet rock for good measure.
Now there was a hole that needed patching. Which I’d never done before, but I’d seen it done. It looked easy. I would need some of that stuff that you use to fill holes. What was it called? Joint something? Speckle?? I seemed to remember someone calling it monkey crap. So yeah, I needed to find some Joint Speckle Monkey Crap. After rifling through the cellar for 10 minutes, I came to the conclusion that we didn’t have any. And being 10:45 on Thanksgiving Eve, I didn’t think Home Depot would be open. I made a mental note to learn the proper name of Joint Speckle Monkey Crap BEFORE Friday so that I wouldn’t have to ask someone at Home Depot where they keep the Joint Speckle Monkey Crap.
Since I had another 15 minutes before the cheesecake was done, I decided to search for paint, because I was going to need to paint over that hole that I was about to patch. There must have been 37 cans of paint in the cellar in 37 different colors. Some were covered in a 2-inch layer of dust; some had unintelligible chicken scratch on them that was supposed to identify what they’d been used for. I came up with 3 cans that MIGHT be a match. 2 of them actually seemed to still have liquid in them. Once I got upstairs, it quickly becomes obvious that the one WITHOUT liquid in it was the one I needed. So on Friday I’ll be off the to paint store to purchase a quart of paint, of which I’ll use about 1/20th. Anyone need a nearly full quart of beige paint??
Finally it was time to take the cheesecake out of the oven. And that’s when I discovered that my cheesecake pan leaked, and there was cheesecake baked onto the bottom of my oven. My new oven. Lovely. Sigh.
Well, at 12:07 I finally headed off to bed. And good news: since I didn’t have much to do this morning, I slept in! Now all I’ve got left to cook is the double-batch of fudgy oats, a citrusy dessert, and devilled eggs. Plus I need to run a load of laundry. And iron my clothes. And hang that towel ring. And clean the oven. All of which I’m going to get to right after I finish writing this. I mean, what’s the rush? I’ve got a full 2 hours before we’re leaving. PLENTY of time.
Photos: wix.com