My Two Nemesese, the Skillet Basil Cream Chicken and Spatial Relations
The Prof sold one of our vehicles. I’m sure it was a long thought out decision for him, but my experience of this process was that one day we had a van and a couple days later we didn’t have a van and there were not any articulated plans for immediate replacement of the van and I was like – van? Sold? Huh? What just happened?
So until we have a second vehicle, the Prof is dropping me off and picking me up, and I don’t mind it because I get in the office and billing by 7:30, instead of spending 1.5 hours in the car every morning dropping children all over the city and then doing battle with my poorly designed parking garage (this garage is epic, right down to gates that don’t work, concrete barriers placed almost two feet away from the end of the space forcing cars to stick way out, and 3 sets of lines painted on the ground, none of which is the clear “current” line, leading to all kinds of crazy choices by the mall-shoppers who share the garage and don’t just know which space is really a space and so people park straight in some areas, slanted in other areas . . . Listed in my nemeses above should also be this parking garage). The impact on my ability to bill is hugely positive, as he has basically entirely absorbed the consequences of being a one car family.
Friday afternoon, he was on his way to pick me up, but I had a meeting run long and told him I’d catch an Uber home. I got downstairs at 6 or so and hit my Uber app, and it required an update, and so I clicked update, and 10 minutes later it was still “waiting.” Since using Uber (that one time) I have become an anti-taxi snob, since a woman alone in a taxi is often a woman subjecting herself to sexual harassment for the entirety of her drive home, and it had been a long week with little sleep and I wasn’t feeling it. (Not All Taxi-Drivers – Yes Every Woman.) I decided to take the streetcar. Having zero cash, I googled the nearest grocery and toddled there in my heels, down the terribly potholed sidewalks, to get myself $1.25 in change for the fare, and then google mapped “St. Charles and Canal” to find my stop. I was standing on Royal street and Canal and the map told me I had arrived, and I was like “surely this is wrong. I’m on Royal street.” So I went one block over and then another block and this way and that way trying to find St. Charles Avenue since google maps kept telling me I was there already, when clearly I was on Royal Street and Canal and St. Charles was nowhere to be found.
Royal turns into St. Charles if you cross Canal. Eventually I figured this out, after blistering my feet and ruining my heels, then cursing my truly atrocious spatial relations skills. Meanwhile it started to rain. It was a somewhat unpleasant afternoon, but I made it home – an hour and a half after leaving my office. I find my stupidity re: spatial relations to be both baffling and yet intractable.
**************
Caught up with another Mother in the Legal Profession last night! They were in town for a conference and we caught up one night for tapas and cocktails, then beers at a second location. It was great – our children enjoyed each other as well. Good times!
**************
I’ve sat down several weeks in a row and put Skillet Basil Cream chicken on my meal planning list, and I have yet to make it. One week I forgot to by the cream, one week I forgot to buy the chicken stock, one week I forgot to defrost the chicken, this past week my husband ate the Boursin cheese that I bought to put in it. The basil I originally bought has long been used elsewhere lest it spoil. I keep re-buying the ingredients and never making it and FINE. I give up. No skillet basil cream chicken for us. Instead, we’ll have this:
Perfect pork chops, baked potatoes, brussels sprouts
Chicken curry (I use bottled sauce), rice, vegetables
Cajun grilled tilapia, black beans and rice