Then he left and never came back. And I had to clean the microwave, because I’m the responsible one in this relationship, and also because it started to smell like clam chowder even in the bathrooms. This is why it sucks to be me. Also, I’m pretty sure that my husband is anti-Semitic.
P.S. Victor says that not laughing at a joke making fun of Hitler doesn’t make you anti-Semitic, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what an anti-Semite would say. They have terrible senses of humor. He also says this is a conversation about “why I can’t act like a grown-up,” but I’m pretty sure it’s really about why he loves Hitler so damn much.
P.P.S. I just want to point out that I actually am a fairly good housewife and that the only reason that I set the oven on fire in the first place was because we were trying to sell our house and I’d read that you should bake cookies before the open house because it makes your house smell homier. So I threw one of those frozen cookie logs on a plate and put it in the oven, and then ten minutes later there was a terrible smell and I raced to the oven to find out that if you don’t cut those cookie logs into cookie shapes they explode all over the plate. And also that when people install an oven they put the paperwork inside of it, because apparently they want you to die painfully when you catch the house on fire from the burning instructions you just tried to bake. Also, they put the instructions in a plastic sheet, which smells terrible when it melts, and it makes it very hard to sell a house when you have to tell prospective buyers that the oven was used only once but that it was used to cook a bunch of plastic and that’s why it smells so terrible at the open house. Also, Victor was surprisingly critical of the whole event, considering that I was only trying to help, and he told me that our insurance company was making us install a halon fire extinguisher system in the new house unless I promised to avoid the kitchen from then on. I did not think that was funny at all and was really pissed off, until the next day, when I tried to heat up the oven again in an attempt to scrape off all the melted plastic still in there, and I accidentally shut a tea towel in the oven and caught it all on fire again. I’m really glad we sold that house, because, honestly, that oven was a goddamn death trap.
P.P.P.S. In my defense I just want to point out that I can actually cook a meal, although possibly not a meal by anyone else’s standard definition. For instance, I have never in my life intentionally made a dinner salad for my family and I don’t intend to. Using that many ingredients and utensils to prepare a dish that’s just served raw anyway seems like a waste, and I’ve never seen a family look at a salad as anything other than something you have to survive and drench in dressing just to finish so that you can get on to “the real food.” I’m not falling for it. Instead I jump straight to the real food. I recently made microwave macaroni and cheese, and when my family didn’t seem properly appreciative, I pointed out that it had taken me a half-hour to make it. Victor refused to believe it until he opened the trash can and found ten single-serving just-add-water macaroni cups. He stared at me in disbelief, as I patted myself on the back for taking out the other trash sack from earlier, which had included an additional ten single-serving macaroni dishes, which had sort of fused together into a single, melty pile. Apparently if you want to cook ten plastic serving bowls for three minutes each you shouldn’t just shove them all in the microwave all together for thirty minutes and then leave to take a shower. This is my advice to you, and is something Julia Child never covered.
P.P.P.P.S. Also, if you try to make a shrimp boil but the bag of spices bursts and so you just toss it all in along with whatever spices you can find in the pantry, you can make homemade pepper spray. Unintentionally. And everyone at your dinner party will run outside for the next hour, coughing and tearing up as if they’ve been Maced. Because technically they kind of have been. Because mace was one of the spices I found in the pantry. I blame whoever makes spice out of Mace, and I reminded my gasping dinner guests that even if I did Mace them, I did it in an old-fashioned, homemade, Martha Stewart sort of way. With love.
1. After I read this chapter to my editor she pointed out that I’ve been using the phrase “whip-its” incorrectly for my entire life, as it really refers to getting high from nitrous oxide and can totally kill you. Which explains why people look at me so strangely when I tell them that some of my most cherished childhood memories include doing whip-its with my grandmother. My editor consoled me with the fact that maybe people thought I was talking about the dog (whippet), but then admitted that didn’t make it much better.