Driving the Struggle Bus on Labor Day

Happy Labor Day, everyone! I hope you are all having a great day.

I'm having the strangest, most messed up Labor Day ever. I am definitely back in the driver's seat of the struggle bus. Allow me to elaborate.

I've been concentrating on writing for conference contests for the past six weeks or so. Everything else has been put on the back burner. The submission deadline for both conferences was last night at midnight. I believe I sent my last submission around 11:30 p.m. last night.

I woke up this morning feeling good and ready to catch up on all the things I've been letting slide. First up was the dishes. I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher. Then I went in search of Brillo Pads to scrub my pans. No luck there. I added them to my shopping list. The pans could wait a few hours.

Then I started the laundry. When I went to put the towels in the dryer, I discovered my cat's bed, which I'd left in the dryer last night, was still wet. Instead of trying to dry it further, I draped it on a chair under the ceiling fan.

I've had to wash it several times over the past few days because she keeps peeing on it. I have made her a pallet of plush throws on the floor to use because this bed is not going back into use. I'm sure one of the reasons she keeps peeing on it is that I'm not getting all traces of the smell removed, despite using laundry sanitizer and washing it thoroughly.

Once that was done, I decided it was time to make banana zucchini bread. I was finally able to talk my husband into keeping the bananas after he deemed they were no good, which means they're ripe. I'm not about to waste the opportunity to use them.

I was adding the flour mixture to the eggs, sugar, and oil when I knocked my two-cup Pyrex measuring cup off the counter. It hit the kitchen tile like a bomb. Miniscule shards of glass went everywhere! After spending a good hour sweeping the floor, shaking and washing the rugs, and giving my cat fresh bowls (I wasn't taking any chances with her food and water), I was finally able to think about making lunch.

I'd been looking forward to having muscles all weekend. Jim doesn't like them, so the entire frozen box had my name on it. It was a small with only two servings, but it was mine. I followed the instructions on the box, and they smelled great. I anxiously poured them into a bowl with their butter sauce and sat down to eat my treat.

They weren't hot. No problem. I put them back in the pan and turned the burner back on. It was nearly two o'clock by this point, and I was extremely hungry. So, I grabbed my bag of tortilla chips, where was basically a bag of crumbs, and started munching.

It had only been a couple of minutes when I smelled something burning. I rushed into the kitchen to find black smoke billowing from my pan. I quickly removed the pan from the burner and filled it with water. The ensuing hiss was accompanied by my entire house filling with smoke.

I turned on the living room ceiling fan and opened the windows. In the meantime, the oven timer went off, and I rushed to check my banana zucchini bread. Both loaves were still raw in the middle, so I put them back in the oven for an additional fifteen minutes. Apparently, that was too long. They are a bit crispy around the edges, but they didn't roll coal, so I'm calling them fine.

Back to my muscles. I removed each one from the pan individually and scraped the charred bits off them. I then ate what I could of them because they were still fine under their blackened crust. They didn't taste terrible, but I don't think I'll be buying more anytime soon.

You may think I am a disaster in the kitchen. Not true. I'm normally a very good cook. I have a pot of homemade goulash simmering on the stove right now. It looks and smells perfect. If my husband gets home from work on time tonight, it should be yummy.

To top off my day, I received an email from a man who told me he'd like to be my boyfriend. The email came from a legitimate looking Gmail account. It's an odd thing for a woman who has been married for nearly twenty-six years to receive such a thing.

Sleeping late this morning was wonderful, and my day wasn't wasted. It was challenging, but it was nice to be home. Hopefully, the bad luck from today won't stretch to my contest entries.

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