Tag: saturdays

What a way to wake up

So, the toilet in our house clogged this morning.  I won’t go so far as to actually tell you WHO clogged it, but you’re all smart people.

Henry woke me up at 6:57 because he was feeling like a wild child, he jumped up on the bed and bounced on me until I scratched him behind his ears.  Then he started licking my face and I drew the line there, so I sent him off to play with his Strawberry in the other room.  I just lay there for about ten minutes before thinking I’d never fall back to sleep, so I got up and grabbed my robe and book, intent on making Triple Citrus Cupcakes for Joey to munch on while he’s studying for his exam later.

Joey was still quite asleep.

I was sneaking around, trying to be quiet, when ALL OF A SUDDEN I noticed the toilet in the bathroom was just centimeteres away from overflowing.  (WOAH, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!?!)

I have this leftover childhood terror of overflowing toilets.  They make me quivery inside and frighten me to my bones.  Once, when I was about four, the toilet overflowed in the bathroom at my Grandpa Richardson’s church, right before he was going to preach.  I guess it traumatized me so bad I have been terrified of the experience ever since.

For a second, I just stared at the water as it kept rising.  Then, I realized What Was Going To Happen, and I started screaming bloody murder.

“JOEY!!!!!!!  THE TOILET!!! It’s OVERFLOWING!!!!”

Poor guy was still asleep.  So I kept screaming.  ”HELP!  IT’S GOING TO GET EVERYWHERE!”

And I was still just standing there, staring at it like a deer in the headlights.  My heart was pounding and I was feeling all cold-sweaty.  Joey was STILL NOT COMING.

So I kept screaming.

And then I started screaming and jumping up and down on the floor, because maybe THAT would make him come sooner?

I heard rustlings in the bedroom, and soon a very, very bleary-eyed Joey came stumbling into the bathroom, shaking his head to wake himself up.  He said, “Pick up the rugs,” and I looked at him like, you want me to get closer to that toilet?

But at least he was awake and he could save the day.

Instead of taking the rugs up, I started taking the tissue box and candles off the top of the toilet because I guess I had taken leave of my senses.  Once I got that stuff off, I grabbed the rugs and ran out of the bathroom.

“Do we even have a plunger?” Joey asked, as he examined The Situation in the Bathroom.

“Um, we used to…” I said.  But we’ve never used it.

Well, the water wound up not overflowing, but we still can’t find the plunger.  I have this really bad feeling like I threw it away.  (I have this problem with throwing stuff out: I threw the ranch dressing away last week because I thought it “looked weird”.  Joey says I’m not allowed to throw stuff away anymore.)

Anyway, the end of the story is that the toilet is still clogged, we’ve torn apart the house to check in all the logical places and can’t find the plunger, and it’s too early in the day to go purchase another one because the stores aren’t open yet.

Let’s hope nobody has to go to the bathroom around here for another couple hours.

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We ran out of flour

I woke up at 8:30 this morning and discovered it was one of those lovely Saturday mornings that seems like it belongs in a Leave it to Beaver episode: crisp blue skies, cool breeze, and the air smelled fresh from the rain that had just fallen.

Henry was wound tighter than one of those creepy tin-soldier windup toys and he was running circles around himself (and me) so I decided to take him outside for a second.  It was so beautiful I wanted to take him for a walk right then and there, but he’s also really clean from his bath last week, somehow, and since the ground was so wet still  I knew he’d get his paws majorly muddy.

So instead I came back inside with grand plans to make some pancakes to wake Joey up with.

Well, Henry and I managed to wake him up first, and when I told him about the pancakes, Joey immediately got out of bed.

Because pancakes are His Thing.

No sooner had he moved into the kitchen and began whipping our All-Clad off its hooks and onto the stove did he holler, “Um, are we out of flour?”

And then I remembered that YES….we were out of flour.

Can’t make pancakes without flour.

He had filled up my 1 cup measuring cup (incidentally, it’s All-Clad too and looks like a mini replica of my pots) almost to the top with flour…but not quite.  ”Looks like we’ll just have to have bacon and eggs,” he said, with great sorrow.

And I sat here and thought about what was in my pantry cupboards, and I remembered that while I may not have any more white flour, per the recipe, I do have: wheat flour, oat flour, soy flour, cracked cornmeal, bread flour, and cake flour.  SURELY ONE OF THOSE MUST WORK, right?  OK, maybe not the cracked cornmeal.

I suggested one of these options to Joey, The Pancake Master, and he said I might as well top the measuring cup off with the wheat flour.

Thus, I did so.  And all the while, the mini Pops that always sits on my shoulder whilst I’m in the kitchen jumped up and down and waved his arms and hollered “COOKING IS CHEMISTRY!  COOKING IS CHEMISTRY!!  THE RECIPE CALLED FOR WHITE FLOUR!!!  THEY WOULDN’T HAVE SPECIFIED WHICH FLOUR TO USE IF THEY JUST WANTED YOU TO USE WHATEVER YOU HAD LAYING AROUND, WILLY-NILLY!”

It is true that because of my Pops’ influence, for most baking I am a total recipe Nazi.  You level off that measuring cup with a KNIFE, not a SPOON, because if you use a spoon you might not get the correct proportions.  And if you throw off the proportions then who knows where the chemistry of the recipe will go?!  And don’t you dare go messing with a bread recipe.  That’s dangerous.

Cooking IS chemistry.

But we really wanted those pancakes.  So I ignored the voices in my head telling me NOT to substitute flours, and I dumped the flour mixture into the bowl which Joey instantly snatched from my hand and began mixing other ingredients into it.

I’ll save a bite of pancake for the mini Pops who always sits upon my baking shoulder…just to see how he thinks it tastes.

****UPDATE****

The pancakes are….weird.  They turned into small, thick, globs.  When one is making whole wheat pancakes, one must use an actual whole wheat pancake recipe.

Lesson learned, Pops.

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