The post where gravity and slippery lettuce leaves conspire to reveal the inner me

I dropped a bowl of mashed potatoes on the floor tonight. Riveting news, no? Stick with me anyway, since the elements of the incident and its resulting follow-up are windows into my psyche. Smudgy, dog-snot smeared, long-over-due-for-a-wash windows, but windows nonetheless. (The nice kind, with the wood spacer bars, and maybe a simple linen valance.)

I opened the fridge to get out a slice of cheese. Hey--it's 9:30, Sunday night, kids are in bed (sort of--you never can tell with mine), and naturally, I want cheese. Doesn't everybody under similar circumstances? Sadly, I can't say that I was peckish for some brie, or some Stilton, or something equally pedigreed. I actually wanted a slice of good old, processed-within-an-inch-of-its-unnatural-existence American cheese, which I intended to carefully place on my also way-too-processed hamburger bun. Haute cuisine, I have arrived!

Unfortunately the person who had closed the fridge before the cheese urge hit--that would be me, or this post would be about me blaming someone else instead of this verbiage I'm subjecting you to--had not done such a hot job of securing the bowl of potatoes. Secure as a way of describing their position is a bit of a stretch. Suicide jumpers on six-inch ledges are more secure than these potatoes were. They were precariously half-balanced on a pound-package of strawberries, propped up with some romaine lettuce leaves, which are known far and wide for their structural integrity, and which will make their way to the dinner table tomorrow. (See, I'm not totally kitchen-inept; my classy choice of lettuce proves it.) So when I yanked none too gently on the fridge door--because this puppy has a seal like an rusty old-time safe on it--the poor potatoes had no chance.

I'd like to say that everything slowed down and the potatoes' short life flashed before my eyes. Sadly, not so much; it was over too quickly for poetic reflection. The bowl landed with a low-class-sumo-wrestler's thud on the floor that I had mopped last night at 10:30, and which floor I had hoped against reality to keep semi-clean for another day. I barely had time to squeak out a half-decent semi-cuss before it was all over. (The half-decent semi-cuss, if you really need to know, started with d- and ended with -amnation. In retrospect, it was a poor choice--too many syllables to push out before the bowl hit. I need to find shorter semi-cusses.)

I once had a mission companion who--though being from Utah--was Jell-O-challenged. It never turned out for her: it was either too thin and unset (and made wonderful popsicles), or it was barely moistened and too thick in consistency. (In which cases it made highly useful, if colorful, spackle.) I used to laugh about it. Not anymore, because I have a similar problem. My particular ineptitude concerns mashed potatoes: I never make the right amount. If everybody is ravenous, then I make just enough to satisfy the baby, so long as he's not in the mood for potatoes. If everyone is heaping their plates with meatloaf and asparagus and pineapple--like tonight, yum!--then inevitably I have enough potatoes to feed the army of a decent-sized third world revolutionary army. I think the problem has to do with my unjustified disdain for measuring instruments. I have a well-stocked kitchen; there are quite a few--multiple sets of measuring spoons, lovely Pyrex measuring cups, even a nifty little food scale. All of which I refuse to use because I have the (admittedly inane) notion that cooking should be an intuitive, natural thing, and that my Swedish roots should instinctively guide me to the proper amounts without resorting to anything so artificial and arbitrary as teaspoons and quarter-cups. (Here's a handy household hint for you folks of Scandinavian heritage: never ever trust your Swedish roots in the kitchen. They have serious problems with portion control and size guesstimation.) So there were quite a few left-over helpings of potatoes available to besmear my semi-clean floor.

Are you still with me? Eyes glazing over yet? We're almost there--and I'll provide a handy summing up of the major points so you don't have to reread my rambling paragraphs. Namely:

1-Given the choice of a fridge stocked to the proverbial gills with fresh fruits and veggies, I will always choose the most unnatural thing contained therein. In a world of fresh peaches and juicy tomatoes, all I really want is the three-year-old Twinkie.

2-I have a sever case of "heck no, I don't need that ridiculous measuring cup--I've got a knack for this sort of thing"-itis, and the hips to prove it.

3-My real regret in all of this was that I chose my cuss poorly.

Here's the final bit of information you need to deduce what kind of person I really am:

I called the dog over to clean up the resulting splattery spuddy mess in her own detail-oriented way. And I was okay with the job she did.


Draw your own conclusions.

(The cheese on bun was delicious, by the way.)