Recipe for Disaster

The other night after a long day at work I drove over to New Mexico aka my sister Erica's house in Gilbert AZ. Now if you have not traveled with me to the far reaches of the valley, to the cow paradise that is Gilbear, you would not know the patient it takes to travel there in the depths of rush hours... but this is how much I love my sister and the whole Westphal family.

I was going over there for dinner. Being a rarity at this residence I had no idea what to expect, but I knew it would be better than anything else that I had planned for dinner which usually includes whatever I can find in the house. When I got there I was please to find that my sister was cooking an herb rubbed chicken with a side of rice, salad and rolls. This being an almost balanced dinner was shocking to say the least. My sister is not what you would call a cook. While she does have the Roush gene in her and most of the time when she does cook it is very good, the activity does not happen very often. I jokingly say that I have cooked there more time then my sister has because when I stay at her house I cook myself almost every meal. Her kitchen is amazing. It has anything you can possibly think of to cook with and plenty of space to cook it in. Thanks to my family, she has an abundance of great pans and pots with all the required accessories to do fabulous things with food, but they are barely used.

Speaking of barely used. After dinner Erica and I decided to make some funfetti cupcakes and cookies. This being a standard tradition in our get togethers I thought nothing of it. We got out the mixer and started to combine ingredients. After adding in the eggs, water, and cake mix, I went to add in the oil. After dumping it into the mixer I though something did not smell quite right. I went back to the oil bottle and realized it expired Jan of 2006. While disturbing that Erica not only had a bottle of oil that she must have bought when I was in high school; the most disturbing is how many times we have used said oil in our cooking and baking since my freshman year of college. I am glad the we have not died and managed to survive the 4 plus years of salmonella infested cookies and cupcakes. Matt then ran to the store to grab another bottle of oil as well as a new box of Funfetti to ensure that we were to have non bacteria ridden cookies and cupcakes for the evening. Thanks Matt.

Now I know how my sister feels. The last thing I want to do at the end of a hard day at work is sit over a stove for an hour or two and cook a meal for myself. Why would I want to spend the few precious moments I have at my home doing a chore in order to feed myself. I am one for the quick reward. When I get off work I am already hungry for dinner and do not want to take the time to go the store and fight with the other business workers to grab there dinner so they can go home and spend time to cook it. I know I know I could go on the weekend and grab meals for the whole week, but I share a house with 6 other people and we just do not have the space in our kitchen to keep that much food. At most I can squeeze some frozen lunches in the freezer for the week, but not much in the way of dinner.

Surprisingly I like cooking and I am not too bad at it either. The Roush cooking gene is strong with me and usually when I cook/grill it comes out pretty well and I do enjoy it. The problem is I have no time. Most days after I finish my 8-5 job I got to run to Mountain Pointe High School and teach the colorguard. Don't get me wrong I love it over there. They have a great band program with a good staff and the students are not that annoying. All in all I love being with the band, but it does drain on me. I usually have to be there by 6 and don't get home till around 8:30. If you did your math that means I leave the house at 7:30 am and 13 hours later I return, and this is my short day. On Fridays I have to go to various schools around the valley or MPHS and be there for our football game, which are again fun, but I do not get home until after 10. It is just a lot of long days during band season, but in the end I feel it is worth it.

I currently only have 3ish jobs which is a huge down grad when I was working 4 and 2 of them being full time. (Don't ask me how I pulled off 95 hours of work a week, but somehow i did. Oh yeah I remember. I would have to choose between taking a shower, or eating every night. It was a bad time)  With only having 2 real jobs I have been able to find a bit of a pattern in life and I am liking the predictability of it all. No more running around Phoenix with the stressful Census, or running around with kids in Mad Science summer camps. Now I have a simple desk job, where I don't do much and a band full of well behaved Awatukee kids. Life is simple and while I like it this way I have times of boredom where I miss the stressful census and always being busy with a task of some sort. Hopefully this job will pick up or I dunno I actually get a teaching job. Cross your finger that Teach for America application goes well...