The lameness of the Res
Dec. 18th, 2007 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonant1. The menu is set for Christmas, and thanks to those of you who answered my poll or shared recipes!
And here's what I have to do to ensure that I don't, say, put carrots in the oven and forget they're there, or still be grinding up graham crackers when the guests arrive, or look around fifteen minutes before dinner and realize that not only have I not whipped the cream, I have not in fact even purchased the cream:
I don't know how much of that you can see, but it's an extremely detailed plan, such as I imagine they use for space-shuttle launches, which says things like:
3:55: BEEF: preheat oven to 250°.
4:10: BEEF: brown, then roast @ 250° 40-50 minutes.
4:30ish: CARROTS: drain, pat dry, toss with olive oil & salt.
4:30ish: APPLE CRISP: drain apples, pat dry, assemble filling, add topping.
4:30ish: KEY LIME PIE and APPLE CRISP: Whip cream.
And there are checkboxes. And, yes, I will check the checkboxes.
2. No image for this one, just a story: The kidlet comes to me and says, "I was looking in the computer room for a box to wrap Lucía's present, and I found this." They present me with a box which says, "For [kidlet] at age 3." (Kidlet will be 9 in three weeks.)
We open it and discover several gifts I bought them when they were under 2 with the intention of saving them till they were old enough -- also three or four cables that came with the computer before this one, a box of crayons, and my better tarot deck.
I'm blaming some kind of bizarre nesting instinct that happened to me shortly after the kidlet was born and made me want to put random objects that I cared about in boxes and hide the boxes carefully away.
This has happened three times now. Last time it was a garbage bag in the basement, carefully secreted inside a cabinet that otherwise contains nothing but painting supplies and a plumber's snake and other rarely-used items of that nature. Inside the garbage bag was my Christmas tree skirt and several sets of Christmas towels. The time before that it was a sealed box under the bed that held my favorite black dress shoes and an early model digital camera that my parents bought me when the kidlet was a newborn -- and let me tell you, if you put a digital camera in a box under the bed for several years, when it comes out it's so thoroughly obsolete that you can now buy similar computing power out of vending machines.
3. Every year I scan a bunch of the kidlet's artwork and use it to make a calendar for the relatives. (Sounds really admirable, doesn't it? But the original motivation was that I didn't have any money and was looking for cheap Christmas presents.)
I've done this for, what, five years now? six? And every single year I screw up the spatial part. If you need to print a sheet, and then print another one on the back of it, then there are three ways to go wrong (wrong direction and wrong side, right direction and wrong side, right side and wrong direction) and only one way to go right, and every year it takes me, yes, four tries to get it right.
So every year I make a little dummy.
(And -- written on my printer in permanent marker is: FACE UP HEAD DOWN. So I'll know which way to put the paper to print something on the back of it.)
Also, I should probably examine more closely this impulse I have to come tell y'all all about it every time I do something moronic.
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns
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timetables
Date: 12/19/07 03:03 am (UTC)And yet I still managed to barely remember the stuffing in time to fling it into the oven and crank the heat back on.
Re: timetables
Date: 12/22/07 04:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 03:03 am (UTC)Please email me some leftovers from your feast - I promise not to put them in a box and save them until Kidlet is 13.
Thanks for the glimpses into the ResLife.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 03:21 am (UTC)I stand in awe, my hand over heart, to you.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:27 pm (UTC)I'll bet your cooking would be prettier than mine; you obviously have far superior small-motor skills, or maybe just more patience. That's one reason why there's no pastry-crust pie on the list; I can make a pie crust that tastes just fine, but it always looks like it was put together by preschoolers before naptime.
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 03:21 am (UTC)I just turned around and left. Hee.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:29 pm (UTC)On the other hand, the spouse can't do that because he doesn't reliably know where his keys are, so I'm ahead of him. (The kidlet is only eight, and doesn't have all sorts of things cluttering up her brain. I can't compete with her.)
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 03:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/23/07 06:23 am (UTC)Based on my limited experience? I'd say 10. And then they hit puberty, and I lose my mind again -- or rather, I operate in a constant state of confusion as they lose their minds.
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 03:30 am (UTC)That's the third time I couldn't find the right size only to find the box when he'd outgrown it. grrr...
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 03:33 am (UTC)Holiday cookies: there's a spreadsheet (how much butter, how many eggs, nuts, does dough need to chilled, amount make by recipe).
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 12:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:35 pm (UTC)Most cookie recipes have a lot in common, don't they? I've often wondered: if you did a sort of a branching tree thing, how far could you combine steps for multiple cookie recipes? Cream five pounds of butter and five pounds of sugar. Add flour and salt. Remove a cup of this for shortbread; to what's left, add risers and eggs. Remove two cups of this for regular cookies; add melted chocolate ...
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 04:18 am (UTC)"FACE UP HEAD DOWN" - sounds like a fine title for a story...
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:35 pm (UTC)[mind happily wanders ...]
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 06:03 am (UTC)The packing away items for inexplicable reasons...not so much with the genius, maybe; sadly, I do this as well. And inevitably blame it on the blonde hair (which excuse did long ago become tired and worn, I admit -- doesn't stop me pulling it out every time I find something in a place it was never meant to be, however).
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 06:56 am (UTC)I hear ya :o)
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 12:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 11:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 09:37 pm (UTC)And my hand is 99% better now, thank you! The stitches have been out for a couple of weeks. The knuckle still looks a little puffy when my hand is out flat; it may be like that for good. But I can use it easily.
How's your world?
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 09:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 11:12 am (UTC)While I can understand in a theoretical way the reassurance of a timed checklist, I think I would just grow increasingly anxious as I fell behind schedule. Do you have enough slack time for weird unplannable things? If you're ahead of schedule, what will you do in the in-betweeny bits? If I have unplanned time in an otherwise rigorous schedule, I find I just end up hovering anxiously waiting for The Exact Moment to start the next item.
All of that said, I'm also the person who currently has a Post-It note on her dashboard: 1. CLUTCH DOWN 2. ACC 3. RELEASE CLUTCH 80% 4. RELEASE 20% WHEN MOVING.
sticky note on the dash
Date: 12/19/07 02:00 pm (UTC)I'd still wind up going hicUNG hic-UNG down the road until I stalled. I drive an automatic not out of laziness but out of fear.
Re: sticky note on the dash
Date: 12/20/07 11:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:43 pm (UTC)Plans are inevitably flawed, it's true, but my mind rests easier with a flawed plan than with none at all; I'd rather improvise within the limits of a flawed plan than just improvise.
If you're ahead of schedule, what will you do in the in-betweeny bits? If I have unplanned time in an otherwise rigorous schedule, I find I just end up hovering anxiously waiting for The Exact Moment to start the next item.
Oh, but that's the great thing! Once I've dealt with the carrots, apples, and cream, I can go sit down and eat Christmas cookies until it's time for the beef to come out of the oven.
I love the post-it on your dash, though. I would never have learned to drive stick if it hadn't been the only way to get from one place to another. Eventually I taught the spouse, and if I could have, I'd have put a sticky on his dash that said, DO NOT RELEASE THE CLUTCH UNLESS YOU WANT TO GO SOMEPLACE.
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 05:00 pm (UTC)But a note on the printer for direction of paper? I have that. Not at home, but in my office. Because I usually (NOT always) remember, but NO ONE ELSE does.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:45 pm (UTC)I don't bother to time food for ordinary meals; the whole point of this is to upload all this stuff out of my brain so as to free up brain space to actually, you know, enjoy having guests and opening presents.
(no subject)
Date: 12/19/07 05:52 pm (UTC)3. Every year I scan a bunch of the kidlet's artwork and use it to make a calendar for the relatives. (Sounds really admirable, doesn't it? But the original motivation was that I didn't have any money and was looking for cheap Christmas presents.)
well, I always thought this was a lovely idea for a gift. I went so far as to buy the kits to make the calendars, but I collected photos of the kids taken throughout the year to put in the next year's calendar. I've done this at least twice. I've never managed to produce, much less deliver the calendars. I think my lameness trumps yours completely ;)
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:47 pm (UTC)Also the Photoshop method is cheaper, leaving me with more leftover Christmas budget to spend on ornaments on the 26th.
(no subject)
Date: 12/20/07 02:11 am (UTC)With about six columns on the main page, ranging from warehouse club through two local chains to "those amazing places that cater to Mennonite bakers and therefore carry every kind of flour known to humankind". It even still has columns for Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, neither of which has an outpost anywhere near me, so that I can do snatch-and-grab shopping there when I'm in DC.
Also, a sheet of paper with a giant arrow on it lives under the cover plate on my multipurpose printer, just to remind me which direction (up and to the right) things to be scanned must be facing in order for the scan to be of something other than a black whole.
In sum: I feel your pain, and I admire your organizational intentions.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:49 pm (UTC)Don't prices change a lot, though?
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 05:12 pm (UTC)Not a lot, actually - IME, anyway. Seasonally, yeah, sometimes - especially produce, and especially produce that's native to one's geographical area. I find, though, that the base price of many things stays remarkably consistent. This is particularly true of shelf-stable goods. Olive oil costs the same at Trader Joe's and Costco and Kroger year-round. Ditto whole-wheat flour, canned tomatoes, etc. etc. etc.
If your town has a Big Lots or an Odd Lots or a similar sort of overstock chain, I recommend those as well. They're weirdly useful for shelf-stable stuff - tea, coffee, canned goods, pasta, oils and vinegars and dressings - and they sometimes have unexpected luxury goods for very little $$. We have a local scratch-and-dent store, Finders Keepers, that's even better. I don't track much there, because their inventory changes dramatically from week to week, but I have a list of stuff I'll check for there first. (Coffee's a big one. Last time I was there I got a 40-oz bag of whole-bean Starbucks house blend coffee for $13. Ordinarily that stuff is, like, $12/lb.)
If I could justify subscribing to the local paper (which I can't, because it's dreadful), I'd try to keep an eye on the specials, and also on the coupons. The latter tend to be for stuff I don't buy, but still.
...I might have kind of a thing for food-shopping :). When I lived in Boston, I used to take most of a day to do my food rounds - Sam's, Trader Joe's, the giant Asian market, my favorite Armenian market, Whole Foods, and Star Market at the end for anything I hadn't found cheaper elsewhere.
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 09:43 pm (UTC)There's also a place called Unclaimed Freight, which sounds like your Finders Keepers, but usually I try to stay out of the place because it really encourages the worst kind of impulse buying: "I don't need five hundred paper plates -- but they're only twenty-nine cents!"
And we have an Aldi. The Spaniards keep telling me I need to check out Aldi. They go there and come home with tea from Poland and really interesting foreign chocolates.
The idea of having a spreadsheet of all this stuff is simultaneously appealing and daunting. But it's the next logical step in my current strategy of "don't have a job, thus should whenever possible spend time rather than money."
Would you consider posting a scan?
(no subject)
Date: 12/20/07 09:53 am (UTC)(that is all)
(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 12/22/07 11:32 pm (UTC)there's that veil of anonymity that sets you free to share all the little secrets and details that normally you wouldn't share with strangers or even casual acquaintances...