Cooking Vicariously

One of the hardest things about living with Granny is that the kitchen is not really "mine". I love to cook and bake, and I hate having people hover over me when I do so. Granny is bored, and likes things done her way, so when I try to cook I get, "Do you need a pan? I have this pan. Do you need salt? The salt is over there." She has set aside a small amount of space in the kitchen for some of my cooking stuff, but it's nowhere near enough - there are boxes and boxes of kitchen things in the cellar. So when I cook, I'm going up and down two flights of stairs, unless I super organize ahead of time.
She just bought a new refrigerator which ended up being smaller than the last, so God forbid I take up too much room. Not that I want to keep tons of stuff in there, as she'll just end up washing it all again. (P.S. If I live to 91, God forbid, I'm blowing all my money on expensive appliances. Stainless steel, French door refrigerators, Viking ranges, front loading washer dryers with nano-steam technology, one of those dishwashers that will wash a plate even if it has an entire piece of cake on it...)
Anyhoo, yesterday I bought a bookcase for my cookbooks, which is already nearly full. And I didn't even include what we referred to at the bookstore as "food narratives", books of people writing about cooking. I guess I'm cooking vicariously through my books for now.

And Then...

I got rear ended driving my loaner Friday afternoon.

I am beyond being upset or angry. I'm about 80% to sheer catatonia.

Worst. Day. Ever.

It all started with the television. I had been willing it to off itself last November, so I could take advantage of the Black Friday specials on flat screens, but no, it waited until I had been unemployed for three and a half months to go. So I spent $400 of money I don't actually have, but man, does Food Network look glorious in HD.
That was Monday.

One a.m. Wednesday, and Chloe breathed her last. Chloe was my ex's dog, who for the length of our relationship I considered ours, and well, never really stopped considering ours even though we were living apart. She was eleven and had been suffering from diabetes for two years, and for the last two weeks she had been on a steady decline, which is also why I have not posted anything. Still, we are heartbroken.

Can it get worse? Yep.

Aunt Maisy decided to take Granny for lunch Wednesday afternoon. I didn't hear her come, since it's hard to hear anything over the roar of the Thruway, and when I went to get the mail, I locked the front doors behind me, as she would normally do. Well, it turns out she doesn't have a key to the screen door (as I do), and when they came back, couldn't open it. I was upstairs listening to really loud music with my headphones, so I didn't hear them pounding on the door.
Oh, it gets better.
Maisy ended up dropping Granny off at my Aunt Rose's, about a mile and a half away. My mother called and said I had to go pick her up.
Now I never usually park in Rose's driveway, as there is an electrical pole literally a half an inch away from it, and virtually everyone in the family has hit the damn thing when pulling in or out. But I didn't want Granny to have to walk across the street, so I pulled in, thought to myself, "I really need to be careful with that pole" and went inside to get her.
You see where this is going right?
Yeah, I hit the pole, turning while backing out. Peeled off the entire front end of the Mini.

And this is the point where I really LOST MY SHIT. Because, you see, there are two things I absolutely, unhesitatingly love in my life...my dog and my car. The dog was dead and the car lay in ruins. I can't have anything nice, can I?

It's amazing really, when bad things pile on, how sympathetic total strangers can be. When I called State Farm, I burst into tears to the poor guy on the other end. He was very kind, told me how he had lost his dog two months ago, and when things like this happen, he puts on a funny movie to try and take his mind off of things. When I dropped the Mini off at the repair shop, the kid working the counter for the loaner cars asked me what had happened. I said, "OK, let me tell you about the worst day of my life." He said, "Jeez, it really piled on there didn't it?" Then when taking my info, he asked for my current employer. I told him I was unemployed. He looked at me, aghast. I said, "Yeah, everything's coming up roses for Kim Bojanowski!".

I can't help but think they're sympathetic because they're thanking God it's not them.

I know I would.

Put Down The Remote

If you watch any TV, you may have seen an ad for a new NBC show called "Flash Forward" in which everyone on Earth blacks out for two and a half minutes and sees what their future will be in six months.

My grandmother thinks its real.

As in, there will be some kind of electrical black out lasting two and a half minutes sometime in the near future. Then again, she handed me a coupon for Cesar dog food the other day thinking it was for people food, so I think the long, slow slippery slope has suddenly tilted aggressively downward.

Strangulation Conversation

Granny: Your mother said you hit your leg.

Me: My leg?

Granny: On the bed.

Me: Oh yeah. I was hitting it, like, every day. So I put the bed back the way it was

Granny: You should have kept it the way it was.

Me: I did. I put it back on the floor.

Granny: Uh huh. What?

Me: I PUT IT BACK ON THE FLOOR. No more scars.

Granny: hahahaha