I burned the soup last night.
I had planned out the meal, with a list taken to the grocery store.The white beans were soaked over night and brought to a boil with a few ham hocks. Salt and pepper and low heat. It is a meal everyone likes in our house, and with a few simple ingredients and planning ahead, it makes the mid-week hump easy to get over.
Then I left the house to pick up the kids from their 1/2 day at school, headed to the cafe where Grandma works to walk on the beach whilst eating apricot thumb-print cookies. Followed up by a stop at the library where we loaded my basket to the brim (mostly with Fox Trot comics – Moses is obsessed). I forgot my holds were at a different library (closer to my house), waiting for me, so we swung by there before headed home.
The whole time we had on auto-repeat the song Young Homie by Chris Renee who my 12 year-old daughter may be slightly crushing on. Hey, I don’t judge. I think I was mildly obsessed with Kid Rock slash Eminem at that age(who am I kidding, I still am). The thing about this song is that it’s lyrics are really good. It’s all about life and love and living for the things that matter. Oh yeah, also sobriety. But that is a good message, too.
Anyway, after our errands we walk in the house and it just smells gross. Like burnt soup. Apparently I remembered to stir the soup before I left the house, but the burner was still chilling at a steady 3-spot all afternoon. Yikes. I momentarily considered trying to salvage it by not scraping up the charred bits at the bottom, and forcing everyone else to eat it while I claimed ‘Not hungry’ and then eat a dinner’s worth of gelato later at night. But that is just mean. And also, Jer would see straight through that.
But see. I wasn’t even stressed about ruining EVERYTHING. And by everything, I mean dinner. I mean – I am basically streaming Chris Renee at the moment and was all, “Young Homie, what you really trippin’ on?” Definitely NOT burned soup, am I right?! I mean, that would not be cool.
So instead I told the kids they could watch Saved By the Bell IF they folded laundry while doing so, and I attempted to meet my word count goals until Jer came home. I also called the brewery down the street to make sure they still had their Wednesday Wings special.
They did.
So we ate a lot of wings and we all laughed at dinner. Like, A LOT. It was like we had never eaten out before. Everyone was so happy (I mean Moses was reading Fox Trot and ignoring our laughing, like he did not get what was so funny) and we were all talking animatedly and smiling and no one peed their pants or spilled their water or complained about messy hands or anything. I don’t know why we were all so punch-drunk. I also know I realized 1/2 way through my second beer (The wings I ordered were really hot. That’s my excuse.), that my beer was also 9% alcohol and that is, like, a lot more than my average Corona. So, I might not have been really punch-drunk as much as well, you get what I mean.
The point of this story is, and I realize I did an awful lot of chit-chat here, if you burn your dinner, don’t trip about it. Go get Wednesday Wings. And smile. A lot.
