Hint: This is less lazy than throwing the pan away, but only marginally less.

In this tutorial, we are assuming your pan is already burnt under whatever circumstances. In my case, I was reading recipes online and forgot about my pot of boiling pasta. I finally remembered when I smelled burnt pasta. So we'll start from there.

Step 1: Salvage whatever you can. This means that you should carefully pour or spoon out the contents of the pan, studiously avoiding everything within about 3/4-inch of the nasty burnt mess at the bottom of your pan.

Step 2: This is important. DO NOT SCRAPE YOUR PAN OR ATTEMPT TO CLEAN IT IMMEDIATELY. Instead, let it cool completely, then move the pan to your sink. Run hot water in the pan until it is full.

Step 3: Leave it sitting there for a week. Yes, a whole week. Do not doubt me when I am providing you with advice on how to save a burnt pan. If you knew how to save a burnt pan, you wouldn't need my advice.

Step 4: Dump out the old water and run enough new hot water to just barely submerge the contents of the pan.

Step 5: Using a metal spatula, scrape your pan slowly. Dig through all the layers of burnt-on crud until you reach the bottom of the pan. (Unless you have a nonstick pan. Then you should use a wooden utensil of some sort. Or just throw it away, because I'm pretty sure reusing a nonstick pan after it's been burnt is a bad idea.)

Step 6: Rinse all the scraps out of your pan. Add a large squirt of Dawn and about an inch of water. Let this soak for 24-48 hours.

Step 7: Dump old water. Add new soapy water. Attack with the scrubby side of a kitchen sponge. Rinse. Admire your pan, which bears no evidence of your sins against cookware.

My grandmother, a stay-at-home wife and mother who served dinner promptly at 5 pm every night, is probably rolling over in her grave right now at the very idea of burning pasta OR of letting a pan sit in the sink for a week. But alas, I am not my grandmother. I work full time and then some, and while I don't have seven kids to raise, it's also true that I don't have anyone to assign loathesome chores like folding laundry or washing dishes. I also cannot make peanut brittle or divinity, and I do drain the grease when I cook with ground beef. I guess what I'm saying is, don't judge me for being lazy, and don't compare me to my grandmother, because it isn't favorable. Thankyou.

Labels: domesticity

I'm currently having an anxiety episode.

I didn't sleep last night. It wasn't that I wasn't tired... I've been exhausted lately and it seems like I'm ready to hit the hay by about 10 pm every night (if not earlier). There's nothing in particular going on in my life that is new, or that would be causing an unusual amount of anxiety.

If anything, I should be feeling better. I recently got a nice promotion at work and am training a new employee to handle the more tedious aspects of my job (answering phones, running classified ads, etc). Thanks to said promotion, I was finally able to jump ship from the extended-stay motel that I've been paying entirely too much money for and get into a duplex in a sleepy little town with no crime and no gas stations open past 8 pm.

I guess it has to do with the unpacked boxes in my living room, and the dirty laundry piled in the other bedroom, and the furniture I don't have. Probably it has something to do with the fact that I'm only really able to breathe during stolen moments in the bathroom with my back against the door.

A few weeks ago, I was inclined to leave this life... To quit my job, to quit my relationship, and to sever the few ties I have to Texas.

I find myself wondering what the hell I'm doing here. Probably my purpose in life is not to be in charge of my boss's empire of junk. It's certainly not to be a pawn in the some power struggle between him and his ex-wife. Apparently I'm not supposed to get married to the man and live happily ever after. (No, for the curious souls among you, there hasn't been a falling out... it's just that that particular outcome hasn't been on the table in a long, LONG time and I don't really see that changing)

I feel as though I'm trying to be something that I'm just not... but I don't even have a grip on exactly what it is I'm trying to BE.

I'm tired of pretending to believe in God so that my coworkers and superiors don't think less of me.

I'm tired of hiding various and assorted problems from various and assorted people.

I'm tired of worrying that the stories I tell on my stupid blog are going to be quoted in a courtroom.

I'm tired of looking at a house that isn't really a home, and I am DAMN tired of burgers.

I'm tired of pretending that everything is okay when it really isn't. And I guess... that's the core of it. It's not that my life is collapsing right now... It's that I spent six months in fucking turmoil and couldn't say a word about it to anyone. And now that it finally looks like things are improving, the stress of faking it for so long has me on the verge of tears in a Starbucks at 8:00 am after a sleepless night.

I'm okay. In an hour and a half, I'm going to pack up this borrowed computer and go to work, where I will continue to tackle various improvement projects, train employees, and generally rule the roost. I might clean the floor with copious amounts of Simple Green. I'll probably leave early, as this is supposed to be my day off. Tonight I'll sleep, and then I will probably wake up with a better outlook... or at least a renewed ability to fake it.

Labels: existential angst

I've not had time lately to breathe, let alone blog, and as we speak I'm being hurried out of the office where I am using this computer.

But I keep hearing this song on the radio, and it's one of a handful that hits me like a ton of bricks every time, and I want to keep a record of such things, so... here.

Interesting.

That's pretty much what I have to say about life right now: Interesting (and not necessarily in a good way).

I'm in the middle of a highly political situation at work that doesn't seem to immediately threaten my future, but which is fraught with landmines and also pretty annoying.

My fine, upstanding (local) friends are doing what fine, upstanding people seem to do when faced with a friend who could use help: they are crawling back into the woodwork from whence they came.

One time I was having a conversation with a bail bondsman who couldn't understand why I would waste my time & money on a person who seemingly didn't deserve it (for various and assorted reasons). He was curious because I "seemed like such a nice girl." And the answer was that the person, though she had a lot of problems, could always be counted to do anything in her power to help me out when I needed it. Sometimes that wasn't much and sometimes it was nothing, but really and truly, it's the thought that counts. I've typically found that when I need a helping hand, my fine, upstanding, church-going, Golden-Rule-Following friends tend to disappear. It's the crackhead you've known since you were five that will show up on your doorstep with a bag of groceries and a six-pack on the worst day of your life, and that's a favor worth repaying.

Also:

I'm writing a book.

I need new shoes.

I hope I never have to eat another dollar-menu meal for the rest of my godforsaken life.

Mechanics are expensive.

Yesterday I found a 120-year-old religious text buried under about sixteen layers of dust.

I can't afford a soda, but I have a Kenneth Cole watch, a pimped-out cell phone, and will soon be the proud owner of a set of antique Le Creuset cookware. That's life in the resale business for ya.

I'm helping some guy who just got out of jail market his new record label. I somehow doubt he's the next Jay-Z, but it's nice to dream.

I wish school would hurry up and start so I could start tutoring again.

I was going to write some things, but there are people tapping their feet while waiting in line to use this public computer.

I keep waiting for the "incredibly good" end of the extreme-living spectrum. I've been dealing with "spectacularly bad" for a while.

Yesterday, I got up and went straight to the laundromat... Because, obviously, I needed clean clothes to wear to work. Once I got the washer started, I decided to go put some gas in my car. While I was driving down the road, someone yelled to me that my tire was flat. The I noticed that the needle on my car's thermostat was very nearly in the red -- overheating AGAIN. I stopped the car on the side of the road, hopefully before permanent damage was done... And sat. In the hot, hot Texas heat. When enough time had passed, I turned the car on, and though it was still pretty hot, I figured I could make it to the gas station.

I got to the air machine before the gas pumps. Oh, in this story, my gas light is also on. So anyway, I got out of my car and looked at the tire. Flat? NO JOKE. It was flat, the kind of flat that some air isn't going to fix. So I took my ass inside of the gas station and spent NON-DISPOSABLE INCOME on a can of Fix-A-Flat.

In case you aren't familiar with this miraculous product, it's a foam that you squirt into a flat tire that pumps it up and seals cracks (albeit temporarily). The can also says that you need to drive the car IMMEDIATELY for 2-4 miles to distribute the product evenly throughout the tire. So I weighed the risk, and decided that the gas light hadn't been on that long, and that I should be fine to drive a mile down the road and back for the sake of fixing my flat.

Driving down the road went fine. Driving back went fine... until I ran out of gas.

So I walked to the gas station with my stupid gas can, which I paid $15 for last time I ran out of gas, which was LAST WEEK. Of course, when I tried to put gas in the can, I couldn't get the lid off. Then, when I tried to put the gas in the car, it wouldn't come out... until half of it ran down the side of my car.

By that point, I had a killer headache. The heat was doing a real number on me... And so was the stress. It wasn't just the stress of the current situation, though. It was knowing that I need four new tires... and new catalytic converter (because mine fell off)... and a new alternator... and probably some other stuff that I don't even know about yet. Oh, definitely an oil change... and some transmission fluid... and a bottle of fuel injector cleaner. Oh, and the car payment is due now, and I don't have any money, and if I don't pay it, the car STOPS GOING COMPLETELY. By the time I got back home, I was having what easily qualifies as one of the top 5 worst migraines of my adult life.

The very idea of going into work, where the most comfortable temperature we've attained in weeks was 79 degrees, and where birds squawk and phones won't stop ringing, made me nauseous. So I called in. I actually felt a little better when I woke up this morning... A day spent in a cool, dark room by myself worked wonders for my headache. That is, until I called to find out what hours I am supposed to work (because we have to do that every single day now), and learned that my hours have been cut.

FUCK.

Seriously, just FUCK.

My entire life is an exercise in stupidity.

Things are weird in life right now.

I'm really aggravated with some people.

I'm also really aggravated with myself.

A few days ago, I ran the car out of gas... on the interstate... and had to be transported to the gas station by the police.

That was pretty much par for the course, for the way things have been going lately.

And yeah... I continue to feel as though I can't tell my stories here anymore.