The Chronicles Of Jessica

Paul is at his first class of the semester tonight, so I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on some things I've let slide lately. No, not the laundry and the cleaning - important things, like Tivo'ed episodes of Oprah and my blog! You're welcome.

Maybe some of you have been wondering how the lasik surgery turned out. Maybe some of you could care less. Well, the upshot is that they did not blind me accidentally and I have not been reduced to covering Stevie Wonder songs outside the entrance to the metro with a tin cup and a hat full of change. Phew. Actually out of all the medical procedures I've ever had done, I would have to say that this was the most painless, stress-free experience of any of them. It literally took five minutes. They stuck a thing on my eye, they told me to look at a red flashing light, I heard a click, they switched to the other eye, bada bing bada boom, I was done. By the time I woke up from my post-surgery nap I had 20/20 vision. It was amazing!

Of course the more I think about it, the more I chafe at the idea that some people make like $1000 a minute. Ever notice that? I mean doctors, of course, but there are lots of others. For instance I locked my keys in the car once and the guy who came to help me made $90 even though it only took him about 10 seconds to get the car unlocked. Where can I find a $9 per second job? I don't need benefits; I'll just work an extra hour and a half each week and pay for my own dental.

We're on a pretty tight budget for these last two semesters of grad school so I've been doing a lot more cooking to avoid spending money eating out. Not that grocery shopping is any cheaper, these days. At the store last night blueberries were $5.59 a pint. And they weren't magic blueberries. They were just regular. $5.59 a pint. At that price they'd better have a little song and dance number prepared for you when you open the lid. God. I actually think that's what I paid for New Kids On The Block tickets 15 years ago.

I'm also cooking more partly on account of being married; I've begun to feel it's expected of me. Paul comes home at the end of the day and he'll say something like, "What should we do about dinner?" He is an equal opportunity husband, of course, and he would take charge of dinner if I insisted that he do so. But this would result in a higher-than-average weekly consumption of things in nugget form, and things from boxes with titles ending in "ino's" and "oli's" and "ungry man". "What should we do about dinner" means, "I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and for the feminist movement. You are under no obligation to make sure our family is fed. But left to my own devices I will clog our arteries faster than you can say emergency angioplasty." So for the most part I try to take charge. But it's just so much effort for me sometimes. My friend Kate is one of those people who can just come in and look at the cupboard and throw something together, you know? She could make a gourmet meal out of some Stove Top and a jar of blackstrap molasses you bought by mistake because it was on the shelf next to the honey but then you lost the receipt so Safeway wouldn't take it back even though the customer service girl admitted that no one has ever in the history of Safeway bought blackstrap molasses on purpose. But Kate's always been like that. She had a contraband hot plate in our dorm in high school and she used to whip up cappellini pomodoro with shaved parmesan and pignolis during finals week.

People blessed with the innate cooking talent always think it's so easy. "Cooking is fun!! Whee, fennel! Just try things! Let your imagination run wild!" My imagination doesn't do that when it comes to cooking. When my imagination runs wild it conjures up a studly personal chef with the pesky problem of having trouble finding shirts with sleeves wide enough to accommodate his bulging biceps and so is forced to saute in just an apron. (Okay, he can have pants on.) He would also do the dishes but in my imagination I have a dishwasher. And one of those creme brulee torches! I mean, I can take or leave creme brulee but how much fun does that look like?!

I just don't get why cooking have to involve all those fresh herbs. Fresh herbs are so obnoxious. They seem to only stay fresh for about 5 minutes after I get them home from the grocery store. Am I expected to have one of those setups with the thing that mists them every so often, is that the only way they can survive? Then you end up using about a tenth of them in whatever recipe you bought them for, so all the rest of them go to waste. It's like killing houseplants, (which I do with alarming regularity), except worse because then the next time something calls for "italian flat leaf parsley" you're thinking, "I had some! It was right here next to this lumpy mess of green crud wrapped in the paper towel! Can I use dried? I can't use dried, huh? Won't be as flavorful? How about I just rip a few leaves of the ficus tree committing suicide in the den and we'll call her even?"

Stupid Rachel Ray.