I don't know what it is about Wednesdays, but they never seem to proceed in a normal fashion. Half of the time I can't remember the Wednesday of the week at all (this in itself is oddly worrying), and then Wednesday is often the day that your dog dies and you set off the church burglar alarm twice, or the day your girlfriend breaks up with you at the airport on her way to Paris and leaves you her cellphone to remember her by*. This Wednesday wasn't as bad as all that--in fact, I managed to suffer a lot of accidents without experiencing many of the repercussions for them. But still. Wednesdays. Watch out.
It began at 5am when I woke up with a sore throat (unfortunate but not unexpected) and then nearly killed myself going down the front walk on the way to work. This in itself isn't that strange; the February frost-and-melt-and-frost routine makes this a daily occurrence. It wasn't until 9am, after managing to cause the bakery about $100 in mistakes and losses, that I realized that this wasn't mere mishap; this was Wednesday at work. Although the order sheet was stated clearly that it was 170 cupcakes iced in red icing with white sprinkles, for some inexplicable reason I made 200 cupcakes (misfortune 1). Then, realizing that the order was only for 170, I managed to readjust other baking plans to accommodate 30 extra cupcakes. I proceeded to ice the remaining 170 cupcakes in white icing, and decorated them with pink sprinkles (misfortune 2). This mistake went unnoticed until the delivery man, already running 10 minutes late due to traffic (Wednesday Traffic), arrived to take them to their intended destination. And I don't feel it is my place to tell the rest of that story, but I can assure you it was bad (misfortune 3), and I was not the one who had to experience the customer's...disappointment (injustice! misfortune 4).
My boss forgave me for it, though, since I have a fairly consistent track record of success at being able to read simple instructions. I reacted to this by gratefully braking a 600-dollar piece of baking equipment** (misfortune 5). I snapped it cleanly in half, and I'm not entirely certain how (it all happened so fast!), though I do believe it had something to do with sheer surfaces and gravity. Meanwhile, my boss was having several complicated discussions on the phone (apparently his Wednesday wasn't faring much better). I waited until he was done to reveal the latest mishap, and offered to return my most recent paycheque to him by way of apology (potential misfortune 6). He went into his office to fully digest this new information. Oddly enough, he broke the Wednesday creed of misfortune to come out and tell me that I wouldn't be held responsible for any of the damages I had caused thus far that day.
Relieved, I slipped, tripped, and smashed through the rest of my work day***. I showed up at my Gertrude Stein course covered in the icing I had forgotten to wash off of my elbows, and for a while I thought the rest of the day was going to proceed normally (if one can ever consider the Stein class normal), but then I found myself wearing a beautiful straw hat that had apparently been worn by Katherine Hepburn when she did her gardening, and I just knew something very awful was going to happen.
I wish I could say I was right because that would have been quite interesting but, although I almost did sit on it twice, and at one point found myself trying to have a serious discussion about Asberger's Syndrome while dressed as Katherine Hepburn on her days off, nothing really bad happened to that hat. I did manage to trip over one of my own boots though.
I made a quick stop at the grocery store on the way home from work, to get some nice soup to counteract the effects of my ever-worsening cold. I picked out a container of minestrone****, shoved it into my full-to-overflowing backpack, and went home, where, lumbering up the stairs to my room, I tripped and smashed my backpack on several stairs. It was about 10 minutes later that I remembered what had been in the bag when I smashed it, and I ran back to my room to discover my books, papers, and a change of clothes awash in beans and tomato broth (misfortune...8?).
This was when I decided to stay home from my church membership meeting. The thought of all the misfortunes that might befall me in transit to and from church made me shudder. Instead, I went with the much better idea of taking out a bunch of knives, turning on the stove full blast, and trying to make my own soup (and for some inexplicable reason I decided to peel the potatoes with a butcher knife. Was this misfortune or just plain idiocy? I cannot say). While waiting for the soup to boil, I decided to pass the time by writing this post. 40 minutes later***** I suddenly realized I had a full pot of soup on the stove, set to well-above simmering. Rushing down the stairs to check on it, I managed to knock two paintings off of the wall (misfortune 9).
Then Ben arrived from the computer doctor and there was a lot of business about our family computer being wiped clean of all viruses and any files of great interest or importance, and everyone having backed up all their own files except for me, and this gives me a great opportunity to sulk and add to the list of grave misfortunes but I must admit I can't actually remember what I lost (or IF I lost anything) and anyway it was my own fault for not saving things on something other than a CD disc 4 years ago or the USB stick I lost in Halifax so I can only call this Misfortune 9 and a half. But then...Ben had been so helpful in actually getting the computer fixed that I couldn't even bring myself to sulk about it, and you know how I love a good sulk. So let's just round that up to Misfortune 10.
Now I should go to bed before I accidentally amass a great quantity of famous paintings in my bedroom and proceed to set the house on fire.
*and no that is not my story. though it's so interesting I sort of wish it was. Better to have loved and lost, so one can describe it in an entertaining manner, than to never have loved and therefore have no stories at all.
**I won't bore you with the details of what it was, since most kitchens--and even commercial bakeries--don't have it. Just imagine something beautiful and incredibly useful to the point of indispensability, like a unicorn that can produce perfectly baked cupcakes with a wave of its horn.
***There is a fun off-shoot to this story about the difficulty I had in actually disposing of the ruined baking equipment, but I'm not interested in technical writing today and I feel that you've all suffered enough already.
****My vegetarian creed managed to win out over my need for chicken broth. For some reason, I feel like when I start turning to dead animals to make me well, that's going to be the end of my 'vegetarianism'. Paradoxically, I have no problems with turning to animal carcasses for romantic entertainment value, as you will see in my recipe for Valentine's Day Oreo Chicken (coming soon).
*****Yes, it does actually take upwards of an hour to complete a post. Sad but true.
No comments:
Post a Comment