My First Day As A Housewife (...well, not officially)

Whoa, today was NUTS!

I decided I wanted to make it completely productive, so after seeing Neil off to work with his little bagged lunch (okay, and taking a nap so I'd be fully energized), I began my first duty--the BRISKET. This was a new undertaking. I'd Crock-potted before, but this was slow-roasting, for eight hours, with beer! After about my seventh phone call to Dad about another detail I wasn't sure how to do, I was ready. I put the ginormous brisket into the glass pan (soooo much easier to wash, y'all), stabbed it with a knife over and over (is it frightening that I found that action totally satisfying?), covered it in two bottles of beer, sprinkled it liberally with worcestershire sauce, then smashed some garlic cloves and cut some onions to stick in the stab wounds. I covered it with tin foil, and with fingers crossed, slid it into the oven. (Not literally, okay? That pan was heavy!)

It was six hours before I realized I forgot to turn on the oven.




(Just kidding!)

No, it cooked up reallllll nice, and smelled delicious all day long.

All day long while I was being crazy productive. I boiled two dozen eggs (12 for pickling, 12 for devilling), and actually put the pickling recipe together (I used PICKLING SPICES, people! Pickling spices!) and proudly put my spanking-new airtight container into the fridge to pickle for 8-10 days. The vinegary the better, so I think I'll wait till ELEVEN!! Too crazy? Let me know.

I vowed to do one hour of eBay work, and one hour of manuscript reading, but once I got started organizing the boxes and boxes and boxes of Oz stuff, I spent a lot more time with that. I soon realized I'd need a lot more room than the dining room table to spread out, and figured Neil wouldn't be too open to giving up our bed as an Oz Staging Area.

Our second bedroom had become a lot more crowded since we moved all my scrapbooking stuff in there, so I decided I'd do some consolidating and piling to the ceiling to make a big space in the middle for eBay things. I worked all evening sorting through tubs, stacking them according to weight and size, and fearing for my life when too-tall stacks threatened to fall. I finally got it done, though, and was able to spread out everything I needed to on the newly exposed carpet. It's Oz City in there now! (Or, I guess, Emerald City. Would be more appropriate. Durr.)

I forewent (is that past tense for forego?) working out at the ARC for rearranging the second bedroom, and I think I got more of a workout lifting and going back and forth than I would have on the Tread-Climb, and withOUT the creepy guys checking out how much time I have left on the digital read-out so they can know when to stalk the machine close to when I'm supposed to be done. (My favorite is when it says I have, like, a minute to go, so they stand right behind the machine and wait, and the time slowly ticks down... 4..3...2.....1.....Annnnnd....
Five minutes of cool-down! Yessss! It's almost as good as when someone's following you in their SUV as you walk back to your car at the mall during Christmas season, and you drop off your armloads of bags and turn right back around to go inside. Does that make me a bad person, though? I can try to change.)

Then I served up a brisket dinner for me & Neil, and we ate it in front of a brand-new The Mole! The host was wooden, and the contestants completely unlikeable, like across the board, but it was *great*. Nothing compares to Anderson Cooper, of course, but no one could follow that. Could I have a thing for silver foxes now? I feel like I might. There's one on The Bachelorette, too.

Right after the show, Lily called and we had a good long talk. She had "Missing columbia and kwood" on her Facebook status the other day, and I stared at that for a really long time, sounding it out. "Kwoooooood? Like, 'clued' in baby talk? What?" I asked Neil what "kwood" meant, and he said "What town is Gilbert from?" and I felt so stupid. Because she even told me that she was missing Kirkwood. Anyway, Lily's cute, and she gave me the idea to maybe sew sleeves on my dress if I still wanted them. I love it.

I only read about 40 minutes' worth of my manuscript today, but I got soooo much other stuff done that I'll forgive myself for it. Plus, it's pretty good, so it's going fast anyway.


And now, I deserve to watch my Golden Girls on Lifetime between midnight and one. They are always here for me. I'd travel down the road and back again for them. If I threw a party (invited everyone I knew), the biggest gift would be from them.

So I collapse on the couch, switch it to 42, and settle in....

"Wait," I say to myself (although it could have been aloud), "Tom Cavanagh, of NBC's 'Ed,' was never a guest star on the Girls. I've seen every episode twelve times. I know my guest stars. And come to think of it, this looks a lot more like a scary scary movie than the sunny pastels of Miami and Blanche's living room and lanai. Oh CRUD! This is a scary movie!" [scrambling sound as, overcome with panic, I grope for the remote to change it to 52---and the sweet, always safe sounds of the Food Network.]

What the heck is a scary movie doing in the place of my midnight tradition??

Man.

I guess I'll just do my Tuesday NYTX, take a shower to wash off the grime of this day, and get to bed.