Little Lies

We all lie. And while most of us tell lies to other people every single day, those lies are usually harmless. Unless we’re pathological and insane, they are usually innocent lies borne out of a desire to spare someone else’s feelings. Things like, “I don’t mind!” and “I love morning meetings!” and “That sounds great!” are lies that serve no other purpose than to ease someone else’s discomfort, spare their feelings, brighten their day.

We save the real lies for ourselves. The little delusions we tell ourselves, like if we buy that bag of caramels that we’ll only eat two at a time, that we’ll get up and go to the gym tomorrow. We tell ourselves that a situation isn’t that bad, and that we don’t deserve something better. We harbor illusions about ourselves, our personalities. (Oh my God, I’m going all Meredith Grey on you. Sorry.)

For the most part, I’m relatively forthright about my shortcomings, and if I wasn’t, it wouldn’t last long, for I live with the world’s most honest person and vigilant reality checker. He never hesitates to call me out on my shit, and if I so much as hyperbolize, there is much fun made of me and my dramatic ways. He also doesn’t hesitate to point out if I’m being too hard on myself, which is at least as often as I’m being overly dramatic, if not more, and he’s very, very fair. However, despite my own instincts and perennial watchdog, I still manage to harbor a few personal illusions that I just need to suck up and face, and while they are still too numerous to list here, it’s a start.

I tend to think that I’m organized in matters of the home. Dude, I am not organized. I can’t find shit in my house, and it’s largely because I have no sense of…well, organization. I make things about a frillion times harder than they have to be, because I can’t put things in a logical order. I can’t put my keys on the key rack, and I damn sure can’t file anything in a folder or receptacle that makes any sort of sense in this, or any, universe. I’m absentminded. I put cheese in the silverware drawer. I carry things upstairs and I’m not sure why I came up in the first place. I file things in random, senseless order and hell if I can ever find it again. I am not organized, no. Not at all.

The truly sad delusion isn’t organization, however. Because although it is an admirable trait, I don’t really care. I don’t like organizing things. But the truth? The cold hard truth, if I peer deep into my sad little heart? I’m a bad cook. No, I am a terrible cook. And yet I tell myself that I’m good! I even tell other people, oh yes, I cook! And then I nod wisely, like I’m pondering some sort of burgundy reduction sauce I plan to whip out later.

This wouldn’t be a problem if I could just face it and move on, accept it and go out to dinner. But I love to cook, dude. I love getting the ingredients and trying something new, and getting onion skins on the floor and mincing the garlic into little tiny pieces. I love being able to taste the raw ingredients first, to see what it might be like if there were just a little more oregano, a little dash of sugar. And I’m not bad! Not bad at all! At seasoning, that is.

My downfall is foodborne illness. As usual, my neurotic nature ruins the day, and I live in terror of salmonella and E.coli and so I cook everything – I mean everything – to the point that it is tough as the skin on the bottom of my dog’s little Frito feet, and it’s virtually inedible. Vegetables are reduced to a mushy mess, and the last time I made chicken, the texture bore a remarkable resemblance to…well, to really ancient, dried-out beef jerky.

The only meal I could make with any sort of skill was a slow-cooked pot roast I used to make in the oven (cooks all day on purpose! No diseases can survive that!), and I haven’t made that since New Year’s Eve 2001, when I put the roast in the oven and told Adam it couldn’t hurt if we ran out quickly to get a bottle of champagne, which then turned into a detour to buy a new television. And, um, by the time we came home, the fire department was camped out in the living room after axing down the door and putting out the violent flames caused by my delicious New Year’s roast. And frankly, they were wondering where the hell we’d been, and what kind of idiots leave the oven on? Which: they’re right, except that dude, the oven was BROKEN (which is a story in itself for another day), and though the electrician swore he’d fixed it, we later discovered that the temperature gauge was permanently set to “melt your eyes off” no matter what you put it on (in my case, 250 degrees. You can so leave an oven for 30 minutes at 250 degrees. I mean, not that I’d ever dare do it again. ) (Oh and PS, we ordered Chinese from the Hong Kong Cafe and had to put two chairs in front of the doorway, which was now plywood, to keep us safe because remember: the door had been AXED DOWN by the fire department.)

Anyway, this delusion has never really had any consequences before, until now. Until I have offered to (oh God) cook, uh, Thanksgiving dinner, for Adam’s entire family. And I am just…well, I’m just panicked and frenzied and even though there is an entire month and a few weeks left just…well, just what am I going to do? I will have the turkey catered because again: foodborne illness (as a friend put it, who wants to get up at 3 a.m. and then give them all salmonella anyway?), but sides? I can’t, I just can’t cater sides. I CAAAAAN’T. And sides, my friends, are the real prize of Thanksgiving. And my in-laws? Do not cook. None of them. And well, I can’t even boil water without making a mess and doing it wrong.

Someone help me. Throw me a recipe. Give me a tip. Anything.

*Fleetwood Mac, y’all. (Uh, channeling Paige here, clearly, on multiple levels.)

20 comments October 2nd, 2006