Well, here we are, so I suppose the world didn’t end.  Again. The most hilarious part to me is that the wing-nuts who make these predictions don’t ever seem all that embarrassed that they continue to be wrong. It’s almost like a lottery drawing, you know?

“Aww, SO CLOSE, only one number away from the End Times! Sorry, Revered Wing-Nut Steve…better luck next time!”

Time for another stamp!

Anyway – it’s been a busy week here around HBCIG Headquarters. I guess. I mean, that would explain the sink overflowing with dirty dishes and the living room floor strewn with socks, right?

Actually, that’s pretty much business as usual around here:

You thought I was joking. Look at the dog’s face. He’s like, “This shit is GDFR, folks”.

It HAS been busy, though. Since the world didn’t end on Wednesday, my super awesome husband reserved me a space in a cooking class at our favorite local restaurant. I’ve been to four or five classes there and it’s always interesting. It’s demo-style, so it’s not like Chef is letting us have knives or anything. It’s really more “edu-tainment” than education, but I’ve definitely learned from every class I’ve gone to. Plus, there’s something to be said for spending time in a place where you feel like you belong, and for me, that’s kitchens. And, you know, I’m not ever going to bitch about anywhere that not only actually WANTS me to drink wine, but keeps bringing it to me when my glass mysteriously empties.

Thursday was full of fuckery, plain and simple. There was work fuckery that had me feeling like I embarrassed myself, which is always good fodder for a subsequent round of self-loathing. There was also small appliance fuckery in the form of the crock pot refusing to turn on for me after I had peeled, cored and sliced seven pounds of apples in preparation for making apple butter. In the crock pot. That wouldn’t turn on. After a mild panic about what my options were for dealing with a huge pile of peeled apples at 9pm, (for context: I’m usually in bed by 9, so the idea of trying to fuck around and make pie crust or even wait for the apples to cook down into sauce at 9pm was like, nearly cause for crying. Hormones may have also played a part), and some especially creative and descriptive cursing, the crock pot finally deigned to turn on for me. I loaded that sumbitch with apples, brown sugar and a boatload of spices and was rewarded in the morning with this:

Wow, so brown, much apple.

It actually didn’t look like that at first – that was after a judicious thrashing with the stick blender. I can’t lie to you – this shit tastes amazing. It’s like the inside of apple pie but without the chunks to get in the way, basically. I had a couple spoonfuls of it mixed into some plain 2% Fage greek yogurt for lunch just now and it was like eating all the non-pastry parts of an apple danish but without all the weird feelings that may or may not bring up…

And, finally and most terrifyingly, Friday I applied for spring semester at my local community college. It’s not that I’m afraid of being rejected – it’s a community college, for fuck’s sake. I don’t think they’re actually ALLOWED to not accept anyone who wants to take classes. No, the terror is more along the lines of, “shit, why am I volunteering to write essays again?!”. I always liked school in that my friends could be found there, there was usually chocolate milk available at some point and music class was pretty awesome, but I could never quite get the hang of writing essays. Funny from someone who likes to write, I know, but notice how most of my posts just ramble on and contain a lot of cursing and made-up words and I don’t usually have a point or the ability to edit myself? Yeah. That approach doesn’t really work for school essays, and that’s…the only approach I have, basically. The upside is, I’ll be studying accounting so hopefully there won’t be too much call for essay writing. I’m also harboring the hope that, since I’ve been doing accounting and bookkeeping professionally for more than ten years now, I might actually be able to test out of a bunch of classes. That would save me a lot of time, money and sleepless nights staring at a blank computer screen.