Visible in the photo set I did for my 49th birthday is a small tattoo over my right hipbone. It isn’t new, I got it about 15 years ago. My decision to let it be visible in my photos, however, is new. So for anyone who might want to hear a story, here is the one about that tattoo and why you’ll be seeing it from now on.
In pursuit of my wild dream of feeling like a full-fledged adult maybe sometime before my 50th birthday, I’ve been purchasing tools to help me do adult things like plan meals more than 20 minutes in advance of eating them. Like this nifty fridge magnet. Some weeks, it looks like this
but then there are other better weeks when I plan 7 entire meals with lots of veggies and then actually cook them all and feel terrifyingly mature and know it can’t possibly be sustainable but I try to enjoy the moment.
Adulthood is an adventure in self-discovery. You never think you’ll be the sort of person who gets excited about toilet paper. However, I sit before you today genuinely excited about my new toilet paper, to the point of writing an entire blog post about it. With a picture, even.
It hasn’t actually been 3 months since our last Bob’s Burgers night. I just never told you about the Hatch Me If You Can burger. Or The Cauliflower’s Cumin From Inside the House and OMG It’s Fischoeder. And that is not at all because I don’t like you and don’t feel you deserve to know about these things. It’s because… life. Life has been considerably more lifelike since this little man became a part of it.
The other day when my mom came to pick me up for our weekly Costco excursion, she said “your father got this when he bought some stuff for his drill, he thought you might be able to use it” as she reached into her purse. In the 4 seconds between those words leaving her mouth and the reveal of what “this” was, I had ample time to wonder a) what might be included with power tool accessories that I would use more than my dad would, and b) what possible power tool thing would fit in my mom’s purse.
I’d be lying if I said I know where the month of June went. I have vague recollections of a few things. My dogs both had dental work done. My husband went on his annual two-week writing retreat. Nobody died, and at some point I must have done laundry. Other than that, your guess is really as good as mine as to what happened during that 30 day span of my life.
I did not get a photo of the cooktop catching fire as it was happening because, you know, fire.
Instead, I very calmly reached into the baking cabinet, took out a sheetpan large enough to cover the flaming surface, slapped it down, turned on the hood fan, opened the kitchen window, and reflected briefly on how little energy I had to react to something like the sudden appearance of an open blaze in my kitchen and how it wasn’t even the worst or most surprising thing that happened that day.
The other night, I wanted a burger for dinner. A big, sloppy, extra-napkins-at-the-ready kind of burger. And a turkey burger because I had a Costco four-pack of ground turkey taking up half my freezer. It was a cardio day for me, and a bike-to-work day for The Guy, so I knew a large evening meal would be welcome. And in 2018, burgers for dinner means a Bob’s Burgers Night. Among the produce that needed to be consumed before the next Imperfect delivery were a yellow onion and a bunch of green onions, so I grabbed my handy Bob’s Burgers Burger Book to see what I could find.
What I found was a recipe for a burger called Onion-tended Consequences. Which sounded delicious, but also required a bunch of things I didn’t have around. So I decided to make a tribute burger.
When I set my 2018 goal of working through as much of The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book as I possibly could, I went in knowing not every burger I made would be beef. We have a tradition in this house called Round Thing On A Bun Nights, and by “tradition” I mean “open acknowledgement that there will be nights I am too tired/busy/not-at-all-in-the-mood to cook”. So in the freezer are kept brioche buns that can be simultaneously thawed & toasted in about 4 minutes, and a selection of pre-formed patties of various proteins, meat-based and otherwise, that can go from freezer to pan to table in the time it takes to prep the toppings and thaw & toast the buns. Cheaper, easier, and less terrible for us than ordering pizza, with the added advantage of not requiring the putting on of pants to open the door for the delivery person.
