Appliance Woes

Style, Attitude, Sequins....

So there was some huge National Figure Skating Championship in Cleveland over the weekend, one of those really important Olympic qualifying ones where they battle royale with blades until someone who has worked excrutiatingly hard their entire life for this moment, giving up all sense of childhood, joy, independence, or romance, falls flat on their ass during a failed quadruple super man double take jump, and all their hopes and dreams are crushed into a thousand tiny pieces. And they go home, stare into the mirror at the incoming wrinkles and the line of their ever aging jaw, and they cry and cry and cry.

In between making poopy faces every time I saw one of these billboards, which are alternately repulsive and faboulous, I tried to cook yesterday. I tried to make this awesome Clementine Cake. I know it's awesome, because the part I tried that actually cooked all the way was really good. However...well I think the previous statement should tell you how that worked out.

Let me tell you about my oven: It's about 2 hundred years old, and came with the apartment. Actually it was in the downstairs apartment, but when the neighbors who used to live upstairs went downstairs, they switched the stoves. So they have a totally awesome vintage great shape stove, and I have the oven equivalent of leeching. It has a broken broiler. Every time I turn my oven on, the heat is actually about 75 degrees hotter because the air rushing in from the broiler makes the thermometer think it needs to be hotter. It reminds me of the story you read when you were a young adult about the family of 10 children who's mammy slaved all day over their stove stuffing the holes with paper and precious rags to try an make a single gingerbread cake for Lil Susie's birthday, and all they want for Christmas is a brand new stove so Mammy doesn't get so tired and angry all the time. But Billy gets Scarlet Fever and Susie breaks her toe and no matter how hard older brother Michael works for that dastardly old pharmacist, they never have enough to buy one.

Of course, in that story, a rich old widower has his heart melted by Susie throwing up on him, and buys them a new stove and then sends Michael on a European Tour. I don't think I'm going to be that lucky.

Of course, I don't put my degree of emotional distress (caused daily by this monster) on the same level as a spectacular athlete who has been thwarted by one turn of the ankle...or do I?