Just made whump's birthday cake.

Just made whump's birthday cake. I was thinking of how jhk was making fun of me last night - how I would be "The Worst Project Manager in the World".

"Okay, uh.... we have a meeting today for... ummmm.... what was it? I had it written down somewhere, oh yeah, it was on a little piece of paper here in my pocket, no, wait a minute, dammit, it was the other pants. So, we were going to meet to talk about... that thingie... No, maybe the other thingie... I was thinking about that other thingie this morning while I was doing that other thing and that made me think of this OTHER thing. So, what were we talking about?"

This made me think of how he would be poking fun at my cooking "skills" if he were in the room. He would run in fear. But how silly. I am really, actually, a good cook,.

As I thought this I poured exactly three times the vegetable oil into the bowl on top of the chocolate cake mix. "Ooops. Okay, no problem, we'll just scoop out a bunch of the oil and dump it in the sink. Oops. I guess it already kind of mixed in with the chocolate stuff. Oh. Oops. Now the sink and all the dishes that were in there are covered in chocolaty oil. Oh wow that makes me think of the thing in The Crying of Lot 49 where they say the words 'Rich, chocolatey goodness.' Or was it some other book? I should look it up. Uh. Oops."

I realized the eggs had been coddling a little too long and quickly retrieved them. I didn't spill anything. Coddling, because that way I can eat the batter without being paranoid about getting some horrible illness from the raw egg. (thank you D. for this great idea!) Since they were a little over-coddled I had to kind of scrape the half-cooked whites out from the shell with my finger.

To comfort myself I think of what my ex husband m.m.m. used to say when cooking, "Oh, it doesn't matter if you fuck up, you should follow the 10 percent rule. You can mess up any recipe plus or minus 10 percent and it won't matter for most things." (Said with a sort of ineffable snottiness as if pitying the rest of the world for being foolish enough to actually use measuring cups).

I think of him saying that quite often while cooking and it will probably remain a comfort for the rest of my life.

I successfully hand-mixered the batter, which looked normal - not too oily really, maybe? And the lumps of egg white disappeared, good.

Congratulating myself, I pressed the "eject" button on the hand mixer, thinking smugly, "I'll be careful not to actually push the "mix" button instead of the "eject" button, thereby spattering batter everywhere and probably amputating several fingers."

And the eggbeater mixer thingies shot off with tremendous force like little chocolatey bottle rockets and disappeared deep in the bowl of cake batter.

"Ha ha, oops, well, all the more batter for me to lick off the eggbeater thingies!"

I think what outrages jhk so much is not that I fuck up constantly, but that I don't mind fucking up. It doesn't faze me! Ever!

Oh, oops, walked away from oven without setting timer. That was a close one!

Now I have some nice looking cake, untasted, cooling on stove.

Just now realized I forgot to flour the greased pans. It probably won't matter - too much?

The thing that worries me is that someday I might REALLY FUCK UP and do some dumb careless thing that will kill someone. "Oops, I thought I was in reverse. Sorry, beloved husband and child, didn't mean to run over you..."