I’m drained.

You know how tempted I am to just stop this post right there? Very. But I’ve been composing a post all day in my head so I will try my best to get it out. I’ve been thinking about my cooking.

I’m a horrible cook. I bungle everything. I have terrible bad luck and I’m not very good at following directions. This is not a good combination in the kitchen where food and chemistry are involved. I’ve been cooking nearly every night for the last five years and I have not gotten one bit better. I think I have gotten worse, in fact. I just hate cooking!

Cooking while Baby Bug is strapped into the high chair has made me even worse. Now on top of having no idea how to whip up anything that tastes good, I also have a deadline. That deadline is a toddler’s ability to stay strapped into a high chair without losing it. I have to rush everything because if I don’t, her dinner will be dumped on the floor and/or smeared all over the wall and she’ll be crying which makes it so I can’t think OR cook.

The other night I decided to make Toby’s favorite recipe. It’s called “Dad’s Chicken Wings.” Except I forgot to buy the right kind of chicken wings. I bought the entire wing kind that look like little flappy arms instead of the neat and trimmed “party wings” kind. I hate cooking meat that still looks like the animal it came from. The little wings looked like they were waving at me, crying out in pain as I simmered them in my pan.

I’ve made this mistake before. More than once, even. You’d think after being traumatized by flapping chicken wings waving at me that I’d have some thought process that would help me not repeat such an error. But no. The poor bloody chicken seems to have made no impact on me. I must be a zombie when I grocery shop.

Last time I made this mistake I just waited for Toby to come home and he chopped through the bones and fixed them for me. I cannot cut bone myself. I faint. But this time Toby was not home. He was out shooting and not answering his phone. The toddler clock was ticking, I didn’t know what to do.

I decided I would cook the poor little flappy chicken wings anyway. Let Toby deal with them cooked. By now I didn’t have much of an appetite anyway. Then I realized I was out of sherry! No worries, white wine can do in a pinch. But I was out of white wine too! What to do! What to do! I couldn’t just hop in the car and go buy a bottle of sherry. I had a toddler in a highchair covered with food! Ack!

I had to call somebody. I decided I’d call Toby’s parents. This takes a lot of guts because I don’t call them every day. I had to be quick with my phone call too because our phone situation is not optimal.

Let me just take a moment to bitch complain about our phones. Number one: our cell phones do not work in our house. What kind of service is that? I’ve complained, there is no change. I guess we just need to move or switch cell phone companies. Neither is going to happen any time soon. Number two: our house phone is not cordless. It used to be but it died a horrible death and now we use a cheapy $10 Target phone that is red. Its only redeeming quality is that it is red. The cord is short and it crackles. Half the time I can’t hear the person on the other end because it sounds like there is a firestorm going on inside my phone. It’s horrible.

So I had to make my phone call quick because I was stranded on the other side of the breakfast bar from a quickly-getting-bored toddler and a simmering scorching pan of flappy chicken wings. It is hard to be quick on the phone with family you do not call very often. You have to explain the whole situation regarding the necessary quickness and say hi and be polite. Thankfully my mother-in-law answered and was very friendly and quick and understanding. She’s the best. (This is Toby’s step mom, not his mom for those who are wondering…)

But she didn’t have a clue what to do about my white wine situation. By then I had remembered the bottle of last year’s new year’s champagne I had in the pantry and my mother-in-law agreed with me that it might work. So into the pan with the champagne. Dinner just gets more exciting by the minute.

Amazingly, the champagne was not too horrible. Toby came home, made fun of me and my inability to chop chicken bones and said that dinner tasted delicious. Crisis averted but still, I hate cooking. I hate it! These sorts of things happen to me every night! Maybe I should enjoy the element of unexpectedness and challenge that cooking brings to me but I don’t.