Fruitless fantasies of the closet gadget girl

This weekend makes me angry. Angry I tell you!

Why? Oh why oh why oh why … did I just get sucked into the void created by the combination of couch and television turned, ever so tantalizingly, to the Food Network?!!?

Now, usually, being the masochistic freakshow I am, I’ll watch the Food Network while I’m at the gym, panting like a dying field mouse after cat’s had her way with it, watching all the waaay too good foodstuffs they concoct on any of the bajillion shows. I love it all; I even love the stuff I don’t eat. I just like to watch. (Ooh, I mean, the food … the food!)

However, this afternoon was far more insidious: remember the cartoons they’d sometimes show on Tom & Jerry, where the housewife (always pert and you just know loaded to the curlers with Valium!) would marvel at the kitchen of the future?

Well, FN just did the same thing, only it was immediately followed by kitchen gadgets. I found myself salivating, and it certainly had nothing to do with the leftover pasta and soy sausage I rummaged from the fridge after bicycling myself silly up, down, over and around Manayunk for several hours.

Of course, everyone who knows me also knows I do not cook. Hell, half nights microwaving is too much of a chore and I can, invariably, be found sitting on the porch in front of half a glass of merlot and plate of cheese and crackers. But, I have to wonder: if I had really cool shit, would I use it?

I mean, I cook at my parents’ house. They have cool shit. But then again, so do I: mutha’ Kitchen Aid, orange microwave, blenders in every combination, and a food processor (though currently broken thanks to Cuisinart’s shitty plastic construction. Gr.). Not to mention the European-style electric water kettle (and the British tea to go with it, straight from the Thames … er … market).


But I want more. MORE!

Or maybe just some counter space … ah, it’s the little things.

Which, unfortunately, this weekend have been ignored. You know, little things like balancing checkbook, going grocery shopping, cleaning … oh, wait. No, that I did in spades. Cleaned like I’d been possessed by Mr. Clean, actually, thankfully, though, without the baldness and silly outfit (although Halloween is coming up …)

Cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom, wandered to the store that makes the Dollar Store look expensive next to the Fu Wah for new shower curtains, re-taped my handlebars, did the laundry, and, of course, the dishes … and felt like the biggest dork known to man!

(Dutifully lowered my head in shame when Justin called Friday night and I was … I was … reading!!!! I figure it’s either that or take one friend’s advice and troll for a rebound fuck, though considering the fact that holding the book up to my face is taxing, I’d best wait ‘til I’m feeling a bit more rambunctious—and obviously insane—for that business.)

Maybe what I really need is a break. I’ve been trapped in this mini-opolis (not to be confused with Minneapolis) and maybe what I need to go is get in the car and head north, visit the fam, run around with the dogs (or after them as they’re very misbehaved), and go get some badass canned goods and homemade wine from Justin, and hang upstate staring at the leaves as they change as fast and furiously as my recently volatile life ... only they look prettier in the process!