A Lesson in How to Have a Bad Day in Just 5 Easy Steps, or, Perks of a 15 Square-Foot Kitchen.

Step 1: Battle with Delta & Orbitz on the phone for over an hour. Lose.

Step 2: Decide to step it up in the good wifery department & actually make a decent dinner on a weeknight.

Step 3: Spend over an hour going to 4 different neighborhood grocery stores looking for key ingredient.

Step 4: Preheat oven to a nice & toasty 400˚.

Step 5: Wait for smell of melting plastic*.

See, what I failed to mention in my fail-proof steps is that my kitchen is tiny. Have I mentioned that before? It's tiny. Or, I suppose I should say that it's quaint. It's cozy. It's very New York (i.e. small & expensive). Half of my kitchen stuff is on an extended vacation in New Canaan because there just wasn't room in our little love nest. Me, being the clever person that I am, have tried to make the best of my situation. A piece of furniture is on order so that I can finally unpack my box of spices that is still sitting on the kitchen floor. In the meantime, I have been taking advantage of my oven for some extra storage for baking dishes & cookie sheets.

Including my cake pan. My cake pan with the really thick, plastic lid.

A special thanks goes out to Mike who spent 2 hours scraping plastic out of our oven, to Two Boots for (eventually) delivering some yummy pizza, & for The Bachelorette for providing us with quality entertainment while we waited for almost 2 hours for said pizza to arrive.

Moving on now.

*Yes, I took a photo through my tears. I cried. I was frustrated, about numerous things. And yet I still grabbed my camera. Sad? Mike mentioned (safely later) that I should have taken a photo of the Do Not Put in Oven instructions that were stamped on the top of the plastic lid.

**It should be noted that good things happened on my Monday. Friend Lindsey in London sent me a text message. I don't know why it made me so happy except that a) I love Lindsey, & b) she's in London, so regular texts are unexpected. Secondly - lunch with friend Suzi, which needs to be documented because I ate enough that dinner probably really just wasn't necessary last night anyway. I could have saved myself a lot of grief.