Embarrassing Eating

I am going to HAVE to start having people over to dinner, because the way I'm feeding myself is just awful. No, no, I'm not living on buttered popcorn and fudge, or anything like that, but I'm using just about every convenience product in the whole sidereal universe, which I find embarrassing.

The problem is that I'm sitting in the direct middle of a nest of really good, well-prepared convenience food. I mean, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are right here. So tonight's meal was curried chicken with basmati rice and naan bread and chutney. Admittedly the boneless chicken thighs came out of my freezer and I cooked them all by myself, and the rice was in the cupboard...but the curry sauce was Trader Joe's and so was the naan bread (a minute and a half in the oven!) and so was the chutney. Not, you understand, that I actually make my own naan bread or chutney, but still, I certainly used to make my own damn curry sauce. And Trader Joe's also has these great shrimp shumai which heat up in the microwave in three minutes, and these wonderful scallops wrapped in bacon that you just throw in the oven for 20 minutes...and I am CERTAINLY capable of making my own scallops and bacon. I used to do it all the time. Yet another cook lost to the siren call of the package. Sad. That's why I have to invite people to dinner...I certainly wouldn't serve guests anything I took out of a package and heated up! (Mainly because I'm a showoff.)

So tomorrow is my birthday party. I'm planning to wear a wonderful black dress I have which involves a Wonderbra because it's VERY low cut. What the hell. If you can't have boobs on your birthday, then when CAN you have them?

Meanwhile, let's all cross our fingers. Sarah is moving on Friday, from one Brooklyn apartment to another, and she and her roommates have gathered a bunch of people and rented a U-Haul. If this truck doesn't make a detour to my house I am going to have fits, because I am missing an entire closet and shelving unit...it being filled with Sarah's stuff, of course. And I NEED that space. So I'm going to be sneaky as hell and beg her roommate Alison (one of the many friends of Sarah's who calls me Mama Booz) to get this done. Asking Sarah invariably makes her snarl at me, so I figure intimidating her friends will work better. Sarah hasn't been intimidated by me in YEARS. When do you quit being a goddess to your children, I wonder? Probably somewhere around puberty...that sounds about right.

Right now I'm debating whether to open up a card table. For some reason I have a terrible yen for a jigsaw puzzle (of which there are several in the house...traditional Christmas gifts), and unless I open the card table there's nowhere to put it. I think I will, because I have to do it at some point to get my taxes done. This is because the IRS no longer sends out forms to you, and while I've printed out my 1040A form, I am DAMNED if I'm going to print out all 200 pages of the stupid instructions. Since I can't seem to get my WiFi hooked up, this means I can't take the computer into the kitchen and use the table in there, and for general use, I keep it on a very small table where I can't work on the form and follow the instructions on the screen because there isn't enough room. My God, that was dull. Sorry.

Anyway, I shall report on my birthday Friday...presuming I bother to get out of bed.

Love, Wendy