Today was a beautiful autumn day in Ohio. The sun was shining, the death-like cold wind that comes off the lake ceased for just long enough to let the temperature creep up to a whopping 59 degrees. Naturally, I spent this gorgeous day trapped inside the kitchen baking (ruining) sugar cookies. Since Saturday is Halloween I thought it would be nice to send David off to work, on Friday, with a batch of cookies for the boys who tirelessly work with him. After all, I am the "boss's wife". What better thing for a boss's wife to do than bake cookies? I wasn't doing anything else, anyway.
Originally, I was going to buy pre-made sugar cookie dough. You know the kind you just slice and shove in the oven, the timer dings! and mmm-mmm instant, delicious cookies. Somehow, I got it into my head that making sugar dough from scratch would be better. If at least, inexpensive and more time-consuming. I dug around online for a recipe and basked in my intelligence for requesting the necessary baking items on my wedding registry. Bright red mixing bowls,(so cheery!), cookie sheets and cooling racks (so useful!) and a hand-held electric mixer (so ergonomical!).
I threw the butter and sugar in a bowl and turned the mixer on...or I thought I did. It was plugged in and yet nothing. I thought about taking my mixer to the neighbor and asking her, "Am I crazy or is this thing not working?" She has a child and a husband and if anyone can help me right now it's her. I should have aborted the mission right then and there and hightailed it to the grocery store for that pre-made dough but I was determined. I set the mixer aside and poked at the butter and sugar with a spoon and followed the recipe. The dough was really crumbly, and I thought to myself, "This doesn't look right. Well, silly, of course it doesn't look right you tortured it with a spoon instead of using a mixer." Then I kneaded it with my hands and it instantly looked better. Then I shoved it in the freezer, don't ask me why, something about cookie cutters, but I had to take the gin out of the freezer first and shuffle the frozen pizzas around. Then I got on iChat and Facebook to pout. I left the dough in the freezer long enough for it to be unmanageable when removed.
I rolled the dough out and used Halloween cookie cutters. I begged David to pay $2 for six plastic cutters and I had to promise to use them year round. Which was fine, I was probably going to do that anyway. I don't care if I eat cookies in the shape of a cat all year long. I preheated the oven, stuck them in and watched them bake. Surprisingly, they smelled like sugar cookies. I was excited. This was going to work! Look at me, I'm baking cookies! GET ME A JUNE CLEAVER APRON STAT! Then I took them out and ate one. I chewed and chewed. Hmmm, they aren't bad but they aren't good either. Something wasn't right about them but since I didn't know what I just kept making them out of that first batch of dough. I sprinkled sugar on them, still no change in taste. I thought to myself "Sprinkles! What these cookies need are orange sprinkles." Because sprinkles would have made these atrocities taste better, really. I ended up throwing out the last bit of dough. Not because it was bad, (okay, maybe it was) but because I was sick of rolling and cutting. I did the only thing you can do in this situation, I sat down in the middle of the kitchen and cried. I cried because I had failed and I was alone and in Ohio. I was thousands of miles from the people I would normally turn to for help, mostly my mom.
So I threw in the cutesy dish towel, walked to the store and bought a soda. I was so defeated I bought two sodas. "What a waste of the day,"I thought to myself, "I could have walked to the library. I could have read a book or had a margarita." I called my mom. While my mom isn't the mommiest of moms she is still a mom and when I told her of my defeat in the kitchen the first question out of her mouth was, "Well, did you follow the recipe?". Did I follow the recipe?! Of course I followed the *$#&^% recipe! If I hadn't I wouldn't even have a mediocre finished product.
Being domestically challenged is like not being athletic or not possessing rhythm. Except those are all socially acceptable. Even though it's 2009 and not 1949 it is still socially unacceptable to be female and not be a domestic goddess. Today's women have to have a career outside "the home" and still know how to sew a button. I lack the genes needed to be a domestic goddess. I want to blame my mom for either not passing the genes down or taking me to the mall when she should have been teaching me to bake but I can't. I love my mom too much to do that. I guess I could try again or I could wait until David gets home, see the look of disgust on his face when he eats a cookie and vow never to try again. I could try and accept the fact that I am domestically challenged goddess.
A wise co-worker once told me, "If you can read you can cook." I believed her. After all, I read all the time. It's not that hard, this reading thing. Do you know what is hard though? Accepting yourself. Standing up and saying, "I can't knit and do not feel the need to bake a cake and procreate all at the same time. Do you see this man here? He married me anyway! Even if I don't know the difference between baking powder and baking soda, but thank God, the Internet can tell me. He loves me and all my faults and really isn't that all that matters?"
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