Behind The Thirty-Eight Ball

"Behind the eight ball: to be in a predicament; to have to make a difficult decision between two undesirable outcomes."

"Behind the thirty-eight ball: to put off all difficult decisions until another day, in favour of birthday cake, a present, and a dinner out with the love of one's life."

Yesterday I voted for the latter, as I was going to turn 38 no matter what kind of ball I ended up behind....

So. I decided it would be far more fun to make my birthday cake with my kid than to wait for a call from a surgeon, even though Twinkletoes is an absolute disaster in the kitchen needs a wee bit of supervision when it comes to mixing things. Too bad Mme. Super Vision did not notice until it was too late that Twinkletoes decided it would be a cool idea to mix blue-coloured sand in with the salt.

You see, we had previously thought that this independently-conducted instance of "il faut faire des expériences pour apprendre" only extended to a glass of red goop which, by the look of it, had been carefully created from red sand, water, and a bit of blackcurrant jelly, and thoughtfully placed in the refrigerator for us to discover later.

We were wrong. Mme. Super Vision discovered this new phase of the sand experiment when she noticed blue flecks in the oh-so-lofty egg whites from the last three remaining eggs in the house. This cake recipe requires three eggs. Of course it does. Murphy lives here. And Mme. Super Vision does not even want to know where the yellow sand went....

(Cue massive cleanup of salt, sand, and eggs, followed by ardent lecture on the undesirability of the mixing of non-food items with food items, threat to call Poison Control, explanation of what Poison Control is and why the mere thought freaks the hell out of every mother alive, trip to store for eggs. Rewind....)

So. I decided it would be far more fun to make my birthday cake with my kid....

The eventual cake came out beautifully—its usual fudgy, non-crunchy self—and I'm having a piece right now for lunch. Because I can. And because my ability to cook myself a nice lunch has been shot to hell by the second Montréal's-finest-construction-workers-broke-the-gas-line-again power outage in two weeks, downing my blog, my computer, and my oven.

I don't know about you, but I see, at minimum, three important food groups represented on this plate. The fourth was taken care of last night by foie gras and a medallion of caribou. Yep, I ate a caribou. Bonne fête à moi.

This is what I'm thinking of getting for myself as a wee little birthday present (apart from the slightly less oh-my-god-if-she-bends-over-we'll-see-a-thong skirts I bought yesterday because after all, I am 38 now and we have newer, marginally more decent, standards to uphold):

It was only a matter of time, and we all knew it.

And when it arrives and Spiff sees me using it, would somebody please answer his question better than I did last night? (This was the best I could do: "Uhhhh...wellll...because we can?") Here's his question: "Why the hell would anyone (a) buy a spinning wheel or, even more inefficient, a drop spindle, then (b) bring a stinky sheep fleece into the house to lovingly and time-consumingly prepare said stinky fleece to be less stinky and then (c) even more time-consumingly spin the stuff into yarn one can easily buy in a well-stocked yarn shop?"

Ladies and gentlemen, Spiff is a software developer. He is all about clarity, logic, and efficiency. Do, however, notice that there is a glimmer of hope in that question: he did not simply say "yarn shop." He said "well-stocked yarn shop." See? Every little bit of catching on to the fever helps. (He's also pissed off at our local yarn shop for carrying Addis only when the whim strikes them and refusing to special-order them for individual customers. I told you, he's the love of my life, that Spiff...fighting for a steady supply of Addis...I'd marry him all over again, I would.)

A few more highlights of the best birthday I've had in a long time, which included discussing...gasp...my new World of Warcraft character and how to play nice with it:

Highlight Number One: My present from Spiff was the exact espresso machine he has been telling me we can't have for nearly two years because "do you see any space on that countertop? I see no space on that countertop. There is NO space on that countertop. Are you hallucinating? because we are NOT buying an espresso machine because we HAVE NO SPACE and have I told you that you drink too much coffee? You drink too much coffee...." There is still NO space on that countertop, but you know what? We don't care anymore. I'm going to MAKE more space. Real coffee (which is another way to say espresso) is an essential food group right up there with chocolate, and I need to do all I can to take care of myself and my nutritional needs before I go get a scar the size of Alberta on my temple.

Highlight Number Two: The babysitter offered me a bottle of purple hair dye to soften the angst I will feel when I eventually have part of my hair taken away by the surgeon. She warned us, however, that the tub might also turn purple.

Highlight Number Three: Spiff's response to the idea of having the tub turn purple was "Coooooool!" What. A. Man.

Highlight Number Four: Just being with Spiff. He rocks.

And you all know what I was thinking when he said that about the tub turning purple, don't you? (I mean, besides "wow, this guy really is the love of my life....")

Two words: "hand-dyed roving."

Stay tuned. I'm on the verge of becoming a happily married spinster with purple hair, hands, tub, and roving. I'm even closer to becoming a knitting elf.

Talk about Super Vision...
Life is good, scars and all.
Peace, dudes.

May 26, 2005 10:04 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (17)  | Print