say nothing

I made brownies on Monday night. I learned an important lesson on Monday night. Size matters when it comes to cake pans. The directions on the box (yes, the brownies came from a box, but it's a start) gave me a specific cooking time for a specific pan size. My pan was larger, meaning the batter was spread a lot thinner, meaning I shouldn't have baked it for so long. Bottom line: crispy like a dead frog - not quite tooth-shattering crispy, but you definitely get your exercise eating them. And yet they taste alright; some of the ones closer to the middle of the pan could even be called "chewy" instead of "crispy." So I'm not entirely unimpressed. I had fun doing it. I generally laugh at myself a lot whenever I try to cook something. For example, I still manage to screw up greasing a pan; only about a third of the Pam I spray towards a cooking surface actually ends up on that surface. The rest is abandoned to the wind, as well as the floor. I really need to wash my floor.
I'm really tired today. We had a council meeting last night that basically felt like a mini marathon: 7:30-10:30. As usual, I went home tired and wired. A little TV, a shower, and a couple chapters of "The Time Machine" left me looking at 11:45 and the knowledge that I'd be up at 6:30 to be ready for prayer meeting. It's been a long day. Sometimes on days like today I just want to go home and have Christmas; be with my family, play my mom's classical guitar, light a fire, light candles, light anything, turn on our house's year-round Christmas lights, walk around Dalmeny at night and look in lighted windows, eat my mom's food and tell her everything, tease Hailey about boys, laugh at Caitlin because she's psycho, talk about work and Bruce Cockburn with my dad, and just sit in the living room with someone I love and say nothing. I've found it's rare to meet someone with whom you're comfortable talking about anything or just saying nothing. Rare and so valuable. I miss my home today, but once I'm done this, I'll be sufficiently distracted until I hit the pillow: a lawn to be mowed, a prayer meeting to be .. prayed?, music to be practiced, calls to be phoned, and dishes .... the brownie-baking remnant is leering at me through brown, brown water in my kitchen sink. You think I'm scared, dirty bowl? Let's see what you think after I drown you, beat you with a dishcloth, and leave you on the rack for the night. Take that, fart-head.