I'm completely sane. Until you put me in the kitchen.

I hate cooking.  Truly.  I could live on sandwiches every day for the rest of my life.  I AM an absolute wizard on sammiches. It seems, though, that children and other family members like their food cooked from time to time.  Also, they enjoy baked goods.  As much of a disaster as I am COOKING I can actually bake quite well.  I guess it bears mentioning that I can follow the hell out of a cook book and I have lots of measuring utensils. Which means, of course, that I can get a recipe right 9 times out of 10.

The other night my daughter wanted to make a chocolate cake.  Perfect! All she needs is eggs, applesauce (we use applesauce instead of cooking oil or butter) and water.  THANK YOU BETTY CROCKER! So, she does a lovely job mixing and greasing pans - she's making a 2-layer cake. NOM NOM! As the cake is happily baking, she takes the icing out of the pantry so she can sniff it and look at it and love on it before spreading the chocolate love all over that warm cake. WHAT THE WHAT??  She brings me the icing container - the one we just bought the day before. There was a big nasty hole in the "protective" aluminum cover under the plastic lid.  We immediately blamed my son because he's the type of kid to go sticking his fingers where they don't belong. I charged upstairs to his cave to accuse him of fingering the icing. He vehemently denied having touched it.  Usually he also lies, so I berated him until he almost cried.  Which means he wasn't lying so I let him go back to sleep. Knowing that some strange supermarket kid (we hope it was a supermarket kid) had violated our icing, we trashed it. None of us wanted to risk the likely hepatitis or typhoid.

Baby said, "well, why don't you just MAKE some icing?"

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And that's where my mind went dark and I felt very stabby towards him. I suddenly lost any sense I had while he explained how to reduce the chocolate chips, blah blah blah. FUCK ME! My daughter is standing there with that Puss In Boots eye thing, like she might drop a tear at any moment if I don't woman-up and make some goddamn icing. FINE! I stomp over to the fridge and break out the whipping cream.  EXPIRED?! Sonofabitch! Can we use half and half?  Who cares. We're using half and half. I get the cream warming on the stove and I flail over to the pantry in high dramatic fashion and snatch out the stupid chocolate chips.  I'm whisking the chocolate chips in the warm cream and while they're melting, Baby is tossing suggestions out, like, "Hey BAY-BAY! I think you should put some sugar in there. Do we have any powdered sugar?  No? I guess regular sugar's okay.....hey you know what? Throw it all in the mixer, baby."  I could have died right there and taken everyone with me.  Not only do I not WANT to be standing here attempting to make something I've never made and don't even like to eat, but now you're throwing suggestions at me from the couch?! I FARKING KEEEEEL YOU!!!!!! First of all, there's not enough stuff to even make the mixer bowl full enough, and no I'm NOT going to use the hand mixer. I am WHISKING, goddammit.

As my blood pressure continues to rise and my brain is devising various ways to murder my family using sugar and egg whites, I realize it's my daughter's bed time. She is very dejected about not being able to ice her cake , however she is moreso, thrilled to be getting away from me and my kitchen rage. After tucking my daughter in, I returned to the kitchen to continue my torture...except, wait.  The kid has gone to bed.  I don't have to pretend I'm TRYING to make some icing. I take the pot off the stove, grab some wine, light a smoke and sit my happy ass down on the couch.  Baby takes one look at me and decides that if anyone is going to finish the icing experiment, it AIN'T gonna be me.  I just spent a week's worth of angst in 45 minutes in that stupid kitchen.  I. Am. Done.

On the way home through a thunderstorm yesterday, my daughter and I stopped to get icing. Before we paid for it, she looked at me and then took the lid off the container.  Thankfully, there was no finger hole in the aluminum. Total and absolute mom melt-down #2 averted. Thank you, Carmen.