Too Cool for School

Read the Box

Today I had my first escapade with the new Crockpot. It was a last-minute decision, about 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave for school and I hadn't yet finished getting ready yet. The thought of having dinner ready when I got home was more enticing than looking good, so I dumped the contents of a box of "Slow Cooker Helper" into the crockpot, plus the prescribed amount of water, and turned that puppy on. After doing all of this, I realized that the noodles were not supposed to be added until after the food had been cooked for 8-10 hours. "Oh Well!" I went to school, hair sort of pinned to my scalp in desperation.
When I finally made it home, eleven hours later, the smell greeted me. "Hmm...smells a lot like the school cafeteria." I went to check out the state of things. What I uncovered was truly horrifying. A mish-mash of dissolved noodles and meat, it looked a lot like puppy vomit. But never you mind. When you're a teacher, you've eaten almost anything. I was not deterred.

I should've been. I don't think I've ever tasted anything so nasty. Which brings me to wonder: Was this food ever destined to be good? They were the same basic ingredients, only cooked wrong. I'm sort of glad that I made it wrong because then my expectations were not too high to begin with. But is that any way to live your life--with low expectations? What if I married a guy who turned out to be a real stinker, but I was not too disappointed because when I went to that honky tonk I realized I wouldn't be getting a quality man anyway.

I bought an ipod today. Am I made of money? If so, where is it coming from? I think that buying so much at Christmas opened the floodgates. I usually don't make purchases like that. For that much money, I could buy
better food than what I had for dinner tonight.

In other more positive news, Lindsey came to stay with me last weekend. She even went to the New Years Eve Party with me with people from my church who she had never met before. I kind of mourn our friendship, though. It can never be exactly the same as it was. I pray that we still keep the common ground. And my relationship with God has taken a positive turn this week. I'm starting to realize that even if everything in my world seems to be going wrong, I can fight that with praise. I don't have to just sit there and take it. This is especially good because I know that there are probably some hard times ahead.

posted by Heather at 1/03/2006