Three things that bug me

Okay, I have already covered the first thing that bugs me in a previous blog. That would be Laundry. Isn't this great. I just figured out how to add links to my blog entries and I'm just linking away right and left! So laundry has been covered ad nauseum..now I turn to filling up the gas tank of the car. It just happened again. The red warning light flashed telling me the tank contains nothing but fumes and that I should pull over immediately and fill 'er up. This always puts me into a tail spin of panic. I am blissfully driving around, paying no attention to the gas tank and then all of a sudden I get all paranoid that the car is going to come to a screeching halt in the middle of nowhere, or worse yet smack dab in the middle of the freeway. Usually, when that red light goes on, it is always at the most inconvenient moment of my day. Say, right as I am about to run around doing car pool duties or just as I am racing off to the BART to catch a train. It is never a good moment to fill up the gas tank. When I was newly married and we had only a beat up Honda Civic to drive I used to play dumb and make my husband fill the tank when ever it got low. After a while he caught on and refused to buy into my sly female ploy and started making me fill up the tank too. I guess I was always a little intimidated by gas pumps. It is just a minor little phobia. Every pump is slightly different and I always hate standing in front of them looking like an idiot because I can't figure out the right sequence of buttons to push, and then have to eventually get in my car and drive off because I can't figure the thing out. But, I got over that in a hurry after my husband gave me a solid push in the direction of the nearest gas pump. Still, it is a task that I don't enjoy and it is always a big annoyance. Speaking of that Honda, when we lived in Baltimore I absent mindly left the windows down almost every day. Did you know that it rains frequently and unexpectedly in Baltimore in the spring and summer? We rode around most of the time on soggy seat cushions and squishy floor mats.

So getting back to the purpose of this blog...the third annoyance would have to be meal planning. I do love to cook and I do love to invent fabulous dishes from big oversized cook books that have pictures of Tuscany on the front. I love to mix new ingredients together like walnuts with ricotta, wrap asparagus with prosciutto or heat real vanilla beans with cream to make coffee gelato. However, unfortunately, cooking like laundry, doesn't stay done. It keeps happening and needs to be reinvented over and over and over and over again. I go through my designer cooking phases, but for the most part it is a struggle putting a meal on the table every day. That is why we eat a lot of tacos, spaghetti, grilled salmon, macaroni and chicken nuggets. A big hit at our house is breakfast for dinner...it consists of, you guessed it, pancakes, eggs and turkey bacon.

So, those are my pet peeves for today. If hard pressed I'm sure I can come up with a bunch more...stay tuned!