House of Cats

David makes friends with Chaucer and his leather paws. (Phoenix, AZ)

Chaucer likes him some itunes. (Phoenix, AZ)

Over-saturated color is a great disguise for a blurry image - and if you look REAL close, you'll notice there are 3 cats and one Jill. (Phoenix, AZ)

No scarlett letter for this guy - he had his 'manhood' removed before he got to tom-cattin' around

I think it's just today

Today is one of those days where all I really, REALLY want to do is sit in bed and zone out in front of the TV. I’d like to lose myself in bad re-run sitcoms and fall in and out of sleep as my cat cuddles up against my feet. My head hurts; I’m not feeling social; and I think that my brain has shut itself off indeterminately.

I’m supposed to be working. To be coming up with ideas on follow-up marketing materials for our fall membership recruitment campaign. Or sending out more spam emails about our hair show in February. But instead I’m watching the beta fish that I’ll be “fish-sitting” for the next week. He doesn’t do much; not that most fish do for that matter. But he seems perfectly content in milling about in one place, unceasingly flapping his mini side fins. And he almost looks dead – and I keep thinking I should be shaking his bowl just to make sure he’s moving. And I wonder if I ever appear that way to people? if my face is so blank or my eyes so tired that maybe I don’t look like I’m living. And sometimes I almost wish there were a way to REALLY shut off your brain, you know? So you don’t THINK about how unproductive you’re being, or how much fun you’re not having, how much money you aren’t making…how many elderly and sick people you aren’t visiting.

It’s warm. My desk is in the corner of the marketing office, and my two walls are floor-to-ceiling windows. And that might sound like a desirable place to be if you’re stuck at a desk for 8 hours a day. And really, it is. But not today. Because its one of those days where everything seems out of place, misplaced, mechanical, blasé. And the 100+ degree heat beats down on my all afternoon. The sun shines and shines and shines until you just want it to go away for a very long time, like when you spend too much time with your family – it’s nice for a little while, and then pretty soon it wears on you. Most days I take a great deal of pleasure from watching the critters scurry across the courtyard below: birds, bunnies, lizards, rats. They say there used to be coyotes around our building, but all the recent development (over-priced condos, Hummer dealerships and golf courses) has scared them off. There’s always a crane visible from my window, too, lest I forget that where I’m working used to be the desert.

But really…really, I think that I’m just having one of those days.

My attempt at "Domesticism"

For those who talk to me on a semi-regualr basis, you'll know that I've been talking up the idea of my learning to sew for quite some time now. Though I haven’t abandoned this idea altogether (I WILL learn to sew…even if I’m 80 when I do it), I replaced it this past weekend with another domestic hobby: baking.

Well, sort of.

I’m the really, really impatient type - like, if I try something and it doesn’t turn out fantastic the first time I give up and abandon the idea that perhaps I might just be the next x prodigy. “Practice makes perfect” and all that cliché jazz, I know. I just haven’t quite reached the point in my life where that becomes practice as opposed to theory.

So, I made banana bread last night. I used my mother’s recipe (through her insanity she does have some typical motherly qualities, including a collection of family recipes and the ability to sew). I had been planning on making said banana bread for about 2 weeks and Sunday evening seemed like the perfect time to do it. I even had rotten bananas stored in the freezer!

So this recipe, obtained from my mother via email, was basically a simple list of ingredients followed by a couple lines of instruction:“Sift drys three times. Cream butter and sugar. Add beaten eggs. Mix bananas and sour cream alternately with drys. Bake in greased loaf pan(s). Bake for about 45 minutes (depends on size of pans), but check for doneness before that.”

I had several…ahem…"problems” with these instructions. For starters, she never specified what temperature at which to bake the bread. Trying to think logically, I ruled out 450 degrees because that is what I usually set the oven for when I’m heating up a nice gourmet dinner-- consisting of a Freshetta 4-cheese frozen pizza. After "baking" cookies (well, "cookie dough") a few weeks ago at a temperature of 350, I figured that cookies and banana bread have a bit more in common than banana bread and frozen pizza.

Alright, so I had the oven pre-heated and my ingredients out. It was time to “sift the drys” (which, for someone without a sifter, consisted of a bowl, a fork and a lump of flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt). Easy enough, right? Okay.

This next part is where the real problems came into play. What the hell does it mean to "cream butter and sugar"? Seriously. WTF does that mean?!? After searching on the internet and through the one cook book I own (a wedding present, no less) I was still clueless. And at this point I had already dumped half the sugar in the bowl with the other “drys” but decided that maybe to “cream” butter and sugar means to mix them together until they turn to a “creamy” concoction. So I threw the butter in the microwave to try to make it “room temperature” but there were 2 sticks of butter - one I had taken from the freezer and the other from the refrigerator. So of course one of the butter sticks was more cooperative than the other. At any rate, I began to “cream” the oddly melted butter and half of the remaining sugar, which basically turned into a butter-sugar-hand mixer free for all.

Next up were the “beaten eggs.” The recipe called for two eggs, but nowhere (besides the “instructions”) did it mention they were to be of the “beaten” variety, nor did it go into detail about what, exactly, a “beaten” egg is. Is there such thing as an egg beater? Is this a kitchen appliance I forgot to register for? (I ended up using a whisk). An added bonus on this one: I hate eggs. I think they’re disgusting and the look and smell of a raw egg is almost enough to make me vomit. Oh joy.

So after I had “sifted the drys,” “creamed” the butter and sugar and “beaten” the eggs,
I was, again at a loss. The recipe never said WHEN to add said ingredients together. So I just poured them all together in a separate bowl at this point. The dough was a pretty gross glob of raw eggs, gooey buttery sugar, and cups of flour and sugar – definitely not like anything I gleefully witnessed my mother baking as a child…but I wasn’t quite done at this point. I was to interpret the next portion: “Mix bananas and sour cream alternately with drys.” Does this mean I shouldn’t have added the “cream” and eggs yet? And was I supposed to start with the bananas or the sour cream? OR, was I to mix them together with each other first and then add to the rest of the mix? What I ended up doing, I think, was dumping both the smooshed bananas and the sour cream into the already existing lump of crap until the color was almost cohesive. And as for actually baking these loaves… well… “about 45 minutes”? And how about “check for doneness”? How am I supposed to know when a loaf of banana bread is “done”? And the fact that I was guessing at the baking temperature didn’t help, either. So I ended up cooking them a bit too long, until the top of the loaves were a golden brown. There’s nothing wring with a crunchy crust, right? I mean, especially when we’re talking baked goods. All in all, though, surprisingly, they turned out alright. They didn’t taste as good as my mother’s but at least they’re edible and will probably be super yummy heated up and served with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge.

Will I be baking more banana bread anytime soon? Probably not. In fact, I think I’ll refrain from even buying bananas for fear of seeing them turn ripe – the sure sign that they’re prepped for banana bread goodness.