The Blob Visits My Kitchen: A Metaphor for Life

It's been a long time since I made a colossal baking mistake, but I managed to pull off a doozy yesterday. I mis-read the recipe for Cinnabon cinnamon rolls and the results ended up all over. Gooey dough everywhere. My only excuse is that I was multi-tasking. Along with baking, I was doing laundry, playing with Little Gary (drawing exploding volcanoes for him, mostly), writing my articles, and all that division of focus assisted me in putting in three boxes of pudding mix instead of just one.

Pudding? In cinnamon rolls? Yes.

And the yeast loved it so much, the dough expanded beyond the boundaries of the bowl and slowly oozed itself onto the counter and nearly to the floor. It was like The Blob, if any of you remember watching that little gem of a movie (I have a dad with a penchant for B sci-fi movies and, therefore, I grew up educated in all the weirdest possible outcomes of humanity. It is a gift for which I can never repay him. Thanks, Dad!). Hey, good date movie, by the way.

My kids called me, alarmed at the kitchen being taken over by yeasty smelling dough, and eventually, I went down to survey the damage. Still thinking I must just not understand the recipe, I put the dough into an oiled bowl for a second rising. It rose, all right, but by that time it was also chuckling quietly to itself and eying the cats with a hungry gleam across its squishy surface.

When I finally read the recipe again, I realized my mistake. Today, I tried again and it worked out just fine. They got a little too brown in the oven (note to self: decrease cooking time), but they taste pretty darn good and I'm sure by the next time I try it, I'll have perfect cinnamon rolls. In any case, the house smells delicious.

I bring this up because I was thinking about how it's all a metaphor for life. As I scraped dough off counters, cupboards, bowls, and anything it had attempted to assimilate that had lain in its path (measuring spoons, 1/2 cup measure, butter dish), it came to me that we sometimes make colossal mistakes that start out innocently enough. One little error multiplies rapidly into a big mess, and then you're left to try to clean it up. The good thing is, you can avoid that particular mistake the next time it comes up and get things right.

Yeah, I know. A little too deep for the woman who just watched License to Wed voluntarily. I think it might be a reaction or something. I hate being smarter than the movie.

And now, for something completely different (oh, funny story: last week at choir practice, the director said "And now for something completely different," and I blurted out into the sudden and unexpected silence, "A man with a tape recorder up his nose!" and NO ONE laughed. Cue cricket chirp. Am I really the only one in there who ever watched Monty Python's Flying Circus and had the books with all the Flying Circus scripts? Am I?? Don't answer that.), the only topless picture of me available in any form in any media.



I was two and coming down with Rubella. I think I deserved to sit in the dirt in a diaper and cry.