Imperfect

Last week Gene worked until 10 or later just about every night.  The house got lonely after a few days and I started having weird things for dinner: scrambled eggs with capers and a microwaved potato; a bagel; jalapenos and cheese on Wheat Thins.  The problem was that these odd dinners failed to provide a lunch for me the following day and were rather boring. 

To rescue myself from boredom, I invited a girlfriend and her daughter over for dinner.  We made pizzas with homemade dough.  As we pulled her daughter's pizza from the oven, we discovered that I'd made the crust too thin (Gene normally does the crust tossing when he's home).  Not only did it stick to the pizza screen, it was undercooked.

As we did our best to resuscitate the little pizza, my friend joked that she was glad to see that I, too, had kitchen failures.  "You make things look so great on your blog," she added.

Well, yes, that's true.  I don't typically blog about the nuked potato I had for dinner, the weeds run rampant in the yard, or my recent attempt to bake not-risen-enough bread dough with my new convection oven and wound up instead with a hard lumps of crusty dough.

Except that's what pissed me off about other blogs, and was part of the impetus of this blog: the imperfections, the mistakes, the annoyances, the gaps of knowledge.  I wanted to write about discovery and share that with you.  There are enough blogs out there that make their lives seem perfect, written by people who seem to squeeze 45 1/2 hours out of every 24-hour period.  That's not me.

So here goes.  Here are some of the nonsexy things I haven't blogged about:

• The tumbleweed-sized wads of dog hair lurking under the furniture.  The breeder wasn't joking when she said, "A corgi's first job is to shed."  For that matter, I haven't told you that my winter coat is hopelessly covered in dog hair.  I gave up on that battle and wear my dog hair like an "I love my corgi" bumper sticker.
• The fact that my back yard hasn't a single blade of grass in it due to the nine chickens who have eaten, dug up, trompled, or crapped on just about any plant that's vulnerable to their destructive tendencies.
• I get tired of cooking and cleaning up all the time.  Sometimes if the house has been messy for too long I'll go on strike and refuse to cook until it's better.  Those are the nights I call Gene in a pissy mood and tell him I'm not cooking, so he needs to pick up dinner.  Were I to blog about those nights, the blog title would read: "Takeout for the passive-aggressive wife".
• Knitting is way more gratifying than yard- or housework.  Strangers at the grocery store never tell me that my yard looks great but anytime I'm wearing something I've knitted, the compliments flow.  Hell, just yesterday I was wearing my new shawl on its maiden outing and a woman stopped me to admire it.  Screw the fake humilty: it's gorgeous and I know it.  It had better be after I worked on it for 3 weeks.
• I have cooking failures:. I burn things, especially since getting the gas oven with its high heat.  I suck at making Jello from a box but can make marshmallows from scratch (it's one of life's mysteries).  Uninspired or lazy, sometimes I make things that are so boring and/or bland that even a monk would ask for salt.
• I'm a fair-weather gardener.  Putting on rubber boots and weeding in the rain is not for me.  Bleh.  And we've had a very rainy winter this year.
• We don't have cable but that doesn't stop me from watching too much tv (see the above about knitting and rain).
• I crave fast food at times.  Wendy's is my favorite because they have the best fries.
• We have three rainbarrels, not a single one of which has been set up yet.  Don't ask how long two of them have been sitting on the side of the house: I'm embarassed to say but will admit that Gene brought them when he moved in with me.  The third one has only been sitting out there for a couple of weeks.

I'm not perfect and don't claim to be.  If ever I give a hoity toity impression in this blog, someone call me out on it.