Random Esquire

Something is wrong with me.

The other day, I entered my office building and stepped into an elevator in which a woman was waiting. I recognized her from some volunteer work we’d both done at an elementary school recently. She had clearly lost some weight and done her hair, which curled at her shoulders very nicely. I smiled and she said, “Hello!” I could not recall her name and I wished to be polite so I said (thinking that to comment on her weight would be inappropriate), “Your hair looks very nice.” I smiled. She beamed and said, “Thank you!”

I began to think about work and glanced up at the elevator monitor, which showed the weather report. Chicago had been enjoying incredible weather the last few weeks – staying at a nice 78-82 range. I said, absently, “It’s been beautiful the last few days.”

I looked over at her and she had a bit of a stunned look on her face. Then I realized…

She thought I was still talking about her hair.  That I had just said to her, “Your hair has been beautiful the last few days.” Like a complete weirdo.

I said, “Oh! I’m talking about the weather!”

She blushed and said, “Ohhh,” realizing her mistake and then laughed.

And then I stammered, “But, I’m sure your hair has been beautiful the last few days.”

I mean, what the hell is wrong with me.

Did you know that if you make your bride sugar cookies, you should cream the butter? And slowly add the dry ingredients? and mix the dough with a mixer and then chill it for a few hours before rolling it out into a nice 1/4 inch and cutting the dough into neat rounds?

What you shouldn’t do is purchase a mix from Williams-Sonoma, cut cold butter into it, drop in a few eggs, mix the mess together with a fork and roll it out on parchment paper. With a wine bottle. Before cutting rounds with a wine glass.

That’s what you should not do.

Boss is normally fairly predictable. I chalk this up to my fantastic skills of perception. There are, however, times when Boss will do something so off the wall and unexpected that there really is no way I could have foreseen it. Today, Boss and I went out to do a few small shopping tasks. We’ve decided to go whole grain so Boss was holding a bag with a loaf of bread in it. A heavy loaf of 9 grain bread. As I was getting ready to board the elevator, I saw something out of the right corner of my vision just in time to turn my face into a flying loaf of bread before it smacked me in the nose. Was there a tsetse fly on my nose that required immediate intervention? No. Was Boss suffering from some sort of spasm? No. I grabbed my nose and looked at her. She said, “Oh my God! The bread…it just…felt heavy…I wanted to see if it would make a good weapon.”

*sigh*