The Simple Joys of Minnesotahood

You've probably been wondering what I'm up to these days. And by "wondering," I mean that when you see a cupcake decorated to look like a hamburger, you say to yourself, "Hey! A food that looks like another food! Caitlin loved those. Huh. Caitlin."

My internet silence is the product of about 50 percent laziness and 50 percent purposeful secrecy. I like imagining that, when you wonder about me on occasion, you entertain the thought that maybe I'm marooned on a jungle island with a bunch of strangers who resemble out of work actors from the 90's. (There's a frustrating lack of story resolve and a smoke monster that maybe eats people but, on the bright side, we've figured out the perfect amount of sand and stubble needed stay on the right side of the fine line between sexy-dirty and smelly-dirty.)

To communicate directly with any of you, I would have to reveal the not-very-Matthew-Foxy truth: That I am unemployed and living with my parents. I was accepted to the creative nonfiction writing grad program at Northwestern in Chicago, but I'm trying to find a job on campus before I enroll so as not to increase the amount of debt I'm already in. I've also been doing a lot of baking, reading* , and compulsive thrift store shopping. It would be a nice opportunity to relax -- if I wasn't so deeply concerned that this may be what my life will be like for the next five to 30 years.

I am enjoying being back in the Midwest though. I started really missing it around the time the third Baltimore native called me "nice" like it was, well, a four-letter-word. A ten-year-old girl I used to work with in Baltimore once asked me,

"Miss Caitlin, why you so nice all the time?"

I laughed. "Well, because it's just nice to be nice to people."

She raised her eyebrows at me. "Nuh uh. Some people? You just gotta be mean with 'em."

Lots of big city folk would agree with her philosophy. But Nice is my first language. When my father answers a call from a telemarketer, he sounds like he's politely refusing baked goods after a big dinner:

"Hello?...Fine, how are you?...Oh, no thanks. We're very happy with the service we have now...You have a nice evening too. Bye now."

To sinewy, Jegging-clad East Coasters that probably sounds like the talk of a spineless pushover. For me, it's Wild-Rice soup for the soul.

I haven't been able to slip back into the Minnesota swing of things completely effortlessly though. In my last entry, many months ago, I discussed my exposure to alternative lifestyles and my efforts to adjust. Well, once I got home, I had to adjust back. Sometimes, wandering the Streets of Rochester, I still forget that I'm not on the East coast anymore.

In Baltimore I took long walks because it was often best way to get places. In Rochester, I walk because there are only so many episodes of Vampire Diaries I can watch before all the shiny hair and creamy complexions give me a headache and I have to rest my eyes on some well-lit unattractive people.

One day, while I was dodging cars on my way to the Rochester Mall, a rusty Toyota slowed to a crawl alongside me. I was used to dealing with this sort of thing in Baltimore. When I was on foot there, I had to be prepared for horn honks, creepy eye brow raises and "hey baby's" yelled from the open windows of slow rolling vehicles. This is known as getting "Hollered at." So, in Rochester, when this beefy young driver with tattoos up and down his arms rolled down his window, I thought I knew what was going to happen next. In anticipation, I attempted a move I'd seen Baltimore women do. It's like a combined smirk and eye roll that says, "I am acknowledging you just enough to let you know that I am better than you, and you are pathetic." I should have known better than to attempt an advanced maneuver.

"Excuse me ma'am," he asked, "Are you lost? Would you like a ride somewhere?"

I had forgotten that I was back in a place where the only reason anyone would be walking across two medians and a car-wash parking lot is either because they've locked their keys inside of their car and they're going to pick up a spare, or because they're a crazy person. The fact that I refused his polite offer, combined with what must have looked like a grotesque eye spasm, probably convinced him that he didn't really want me in his passenger seat anyway.

People do get hollered at in Minnesota on occasion, but here, even the men who harass women on the street are more polite. A while back, I went to visit a friend in the big "Sin Cities" (AKA Minneapolis- St. Paul). It's a pretty sophisticated place compared to the rest of the state. They have whole stores that sell just one thing like makeup, spices, or Northface jackets.

As we were strolling along one of the ultra-hip shopping streets, a van full of slouchy-hatted college-aged guys slowed down beside us. We steeled ourselves.

"Excuse me ladies," they said, "Are you on your way to the food co-op?"

We...hadn't steeled ourselves for "co-op." We said, "Huh?"

They smiled, "Are you going to the organic food store up here? If you are, we'll meet you there."

We were not, in fact, going to the organic food store and we told them so. But we did sincerely wish them luck.

While we're on the subject of organic food, I have to say: The few awkward Baltimore flashbacks I've had on the mean streets of Minnesota are nothing compared to the cultural re-adjusting I've had to do in the kitchen of my own home.

See, In Baltimore, I worked hard to make creative, tasty food within the parameters of our many dietary restrictions and a budget so tight that pre-shredded cheese was a special-occasions-only item. My housemates rewarded my efforts by treating me like a culinary goddess among mortals. They’d gush over the food I made with words like, "orgasmic." Men and women proposed marriage to me on a daily basis.

Here in Minnesota, words like "orgasmic" aren’t allowed. Or, they are, but you have to go behind a curtain in the back corner of the video store to see them. Minnesotans don't generally gush. When my family likes a meal, the warmest compliment I get is, "Good supper Caitlin. Very tasty." That's cool. Their praise is understated, but sincere. It’s just that, a lot of the time, my meals don't even make it to "very tasty." I’m learning the hard way that LVC food doesn't translate very well to the Heartland.

I have a vegan friend who talks about not being able to tell the difference between food being regular good and "vegan good." That is, when your diet is very limited, you get used to eating a lot of below-average food because that's what you have to do to stay alive. So, when anything above-average crosses your palate, the taste-bud synapses in your brain get excited and confused. You imagine your tofu stew gilded with Michelin stars. It probably is pretty good, but you don't realize that it wouldn't taste as good to people who don't eat plain oatmeal for lunch on three out of five weekdays.

I realize now that some of the food I was eating was really only "Volunteer Corps good." My skewed perception of food reality led to a lot of questionable meal choices like, say, eating raw-cabbage and hot-sauce slaw for four meals in 48 hours. Or, beginning a passionate love affair with Kale -- the fervor of which is both irrational and alarming.

My parents are usually game to try whatever I want to make. Though, my mom can't completely hide her skepticism. We have had the following conversation a number of times:

I'll say, "So I was thinking about making this delicious Carrot and Orange soup for dinner on Tuesday."

Then my mom says, "Oh, Carrots and oranges? That sounds...interesting."

I – as a native speaker of the deeply nuanced language of “nice,” – recognize "interesting" as a red-flag word. Sometimes it means, “Something new I’d like to try.” More often it means, "Weird and gross"

So, I'll say, "Mom, if that doesn't sound good to you I can make something else."

My mom: "No, no. Make the carrot and orange thing. I'm sure it will be delicious."

Me: "Are you sure?"

My Mom: "Yes. Of course."

Then, after I've served the dish, I'll ask what everyone thinks. And my mom says, "I like it. I was skeptical when you were telling me about it earlier, but it's actually pretty good."

Me: facepalm.

I do appreciate that she makes an effort to be supportive. My siblings, on the other hand, extend me no such courtesy. They are both food traditionalists. Usually, the biggest compliment I get from my 19-year-old brither is, "It's not as gross as it looks."

When my sister was home for Christmas break, she valiantly kept her mouth shut throughout the bulk of my holiday cooking experiments. But when I suggested making cranberry eggnog cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast, she snapped.

"Caitlin, you always start out with good food, but then you make it weird. ‘Oh hi. I’m Caitlin. You want some chocolate crinkles? I made them by mixing up some delicious cookies…then I put gross mint in them! How about some ginger cookies? They were too tasty and not-weird at first so I added some chili powder.’ Leave your damn cranberries out of my cinnamon rolls!"

(That last part may have been implied, but it was implied strongly.)

When I mentioned the marriage proposals I’d received thanks to my cooking skills, Abby looked doubtful.

My mom said, "Caitlin, I guess you're like the prophets -- they never had respect in their own homes."

Rather than give up on trying to shove quinoa and kale down my siblings' throats, I've decided to start calling myself Food Moses.

And yet, though my culinary point of view has been expanded, there will always be a special place in my heart for good old fashioned Midwestern cuisine. Where else do people have the balls to call a dish that includes both Cool-Whip and candy bars a "salad"?

Despite having to make a few minor re-adjustments, I meant it when I said it was good to be back. I love this place where women wear embroidered sweatshirts without a trace of irony. Where a girl can grow up to be a Dairy Princess -- and she can also grow up to be the professional hired to sculpt the Dairy Princess's likeness out of butter. Where hugs must be earned. During my time away, I’ve been exposed to a lot of new things. Some have stuck and others haven’t. I’m sure I’ll continue to explore new places. But, Minnesota will always be home.

This is about the time of year where I regularly pledge to do regular updates here. At this point, I'm guessing you know better than to believe that. I almost know better than to believe myself.

But not quite.

Talk to you again soon! Furreal this time. Kisses!


*In this case, I am utilizing the less common definition of "reading" which is: Watching daytime marathons of Millionaire Matchmaker.

A Minnesotan's Guide to Alternative living, Vol. 1

Oh my gosh you guys. You have no idea how glad I am to see you right now. You wouldn't know it since I only tend to post blog entries about once every two to nine months, but I've been involuntarily off grid for the past couple of weeks.

It all started when my boss decided to clean out her office. You know that scene in Mary Poppins where she keeps pulling coat racks and umbrellas and, like golden retrievers out of her tote bag? I was reminded of that scene when I arrived at work the Monday following my boss's cleaning spree. I had so many questions to which the answer could only be, shrug..."magic?"For example: "where did that stack of two-by-fours in the kitchen come from?" Or, "why is there a broken desk I have never seen before in the middle of the lawn?" For the most part, I applauded my boss's efforts to turn her office into a viable workspace. However, I was less thrilled with her cleaning-fever induced decision scrap the ancient desktop computer in her office that linked my upstairs computer to the internet.

At home, we had internet but I had recently broken my third computer power cord. So, I had been using an old one that shot sparks whenever it moved. Yeah, yeah, I know: "Blah blah fire-hazard, blah blah high risk of electrocution blah." But what was I supposed to do? Go to the library to illegally stream episodes of Holland's Next Top Model? Please.

One fateful Saturday morning though, I was out of luck for real. If this was a cheesy sitcom, now would be that part where we would side-swipe to a little montage about how I instantly went through the five stages of grief over the death of my cord and subsequent loss of access to the internet. It'd be cute and you'd chuckle. But, I'm to lazy to look up what the five stages of grief are, so I'll just tell you that I shook the limp little cord a lot, hoping it would spark back to life and cried, "Why? WHYYYYY??? OH GOD NO!" like I was Meryl Streep and the Academy was watching. Eventually, I accepted my lot and ordered a super sketchy five dollar replacement cord that was probably made out of lead paint chips and squirrel fur.

Then, there was nothing to do but wait for it to arrive. Well, that and, like, read books with pages and talk to people's faces using my face, but I won't bore you with that. I will say, though, that my Luddite-ian experience got me thinking about alternative lifestyle choices in general. I have often blogged about the universal growing pains of becoming an adult -- learning how to clean bathrooms...learning how to feed ourselves...learning to make sure we pack underwear when we go on choir tours (What? I know you guys totally all have super sweet "no-underwear-vacation" stories in your back pockets. I'm just the only one brave enough to share mine). But, I realize that I haven't said much about the life choices I've made that aren't exactly "mainstream."

That's partially because I don't really consider myself an "alternative" gal. I come from a place where the closest we get to buying into new-wave trends is offering gluten-free and whole-wheat wafer options at communion on Sundays. Hell, I still feel a little overwhelmed when people try to hug me during "share the peace" at East Coast church services. And yet, here I am in Baltimore ("Oh. Baltimore. So, on a scale of 'Hairspray' to 'The Wire," exactly how murdery is the block where you live?"-- most middle aged people, on Baltimore) I work as a professional volunteer, with housemates who do things like meditate and abstain from eating animal products and have dreadlocks. I suppose, though I may still feel pretty ordinary, my baseline for what exactly is "normal" has become a little skewed. Some non-Minnesota weird has definitely rubbed off on me.

Beforehand, LVC tried very hard to convince me that their program would expose me to all different kinds of people. They asked phone interview questions that sounded like set-ups for racist Jokes ("You're living in a house with one Lutheran, one Bhuddhist, one Wiccan who believes that every rock has a spirit and a name, and one person who centers herself through martial Arts..."). But I thought, "nice try, LVC. I've read your statistics. Four out of Five of your members members are white Lutheran girls taking a "year off" after being awarded liberal arts degrees somewhere in the Midwest. LVC is about as diverse as a Barenakid Ladies concert." I envisioned me and my future housemates swapping jell-o salad recipes and sharing our favorite parts of Luther's small catechism for spirituality nights. In reality, my experience was more like Real World: The Intentional Simplicity season. I was the token Minnesota Lutheran living with a free spirited Californian, a German Catholic, an East Coast vegan, and a girl who centered herself spiritually through hunting wild game. Suffice it to say, we challenged (and inspired) each other way beyond fighting over who's mom had the best tater-tot hot-dish recipe.

Together, we learned a lot about intentional and sustainable living. Thanks to them and to my new, even more diverse group of housemates this year, I've developed some new habits. But, I don't want to give you the impression that, the next time you see me, I'll be sporting a neck tattoo of the recycling arrows and asking you to call me "Blue Urban Sky." I've changed in my own cautious Minnesota way.

I feel like there's a lot of stuff on the internet written by super impassioned millenial hippies trying to convert people to their dumpster-diving, humanure-using ways (please, if you don't already know what "humanure" is, don't look it up. Trust me. It will only upset you). There is also a lot stuff from apathetic anti-idealists who like to break up the monotony of editing software manuals by posting aloof-yet-scathing vlog entries about how stupid impassioned millennial hippies are. There isn't a whole lot written from people at my point in the journey, which is somewhere between the two extremes, leaning towards the former. To be fair, that's probably because essays about how "meh, alright" things are don't tend to make for very compelling reading. Or, it could be because no one's ever thought to write those essays before. I might be a visionary who is about usher the whole internet away from the "hot or not" model and into a new era of the "pretty good or don't much care for it" model.

Either way, I'm going to go ahead and start giving you my conservative perspectives on the alternative habits I've been exposed to, whether you want to hear them or not. (See? I am one step ahead of you, apathetic anti-idealists. I preemptively don't care that you don't care. We are now swirling in a vortex of apathy.)

This week: Restricted diets

On the very first day of LVC orientation, my new housemates and I made small talk with safe questions like, "where are you from?" and what "kind of food do you like to eat?" I think I might have asked whether anyone was vegetarian. Across the table, I saw my new housemate Morgan grow suddenly quiet.

After a moment she burst, "guys, I have to tell you something."

I didn't have time get past "transgender" and "convicted larcenist" on my mental list of secrets Morgan might divulge because, without missing a beat, Alison asked, "are you a vegan?"

"Yes!" Morgan cried, "yes, I'm a vegan."

My housemates all nodded acceptingly. I did too, but inside I was thinking, "crap. Now how am I going to make these people like me." Because we all know that my friend-making tool kit is stocked with about thirty recipes for cupcakes, laughing disproportionately hard at jokes that are only moderately funny...and not much else.

Where I come from, vegans are in the same exotic category as cabs you don't have to call 24 hours in advance, Belgian nannies and "fusion" restaurants where you sit on the floor and eat without utensils. That is to say, I assumed they existed because I'd heard about them on TV, but I didn't think I'd ever end up getting personal with any of them. Growing up, I only ever had one vegetarian friend. She was also a Unitarian and had five cats -- so she was an outlier. Or, as I called her at the time, "my weird friend". (Potato, potahto.) I'd only even seen one real live vegan. She sang with me in choir. All I remember about her was that she had a blue streak in her hair which, in Minnesota, gave her a quirky/edginess rating of like a seven-and-a-half. (Converted into East Coast units, that's about the equivalent of having a-symmetrical bangs and French Bulldog named Charlotte Bronte.)

I didn't know much about the real logistics of Veganism. My housemates didn't either, so it's a good thing we were willing students with a patient teacher. We prodded Morgan with all our stupid questions, including but not limited to: "Almond butter doesn't have, like actual butter in it, does it?" "So you're vegan...but you can eat shrimp, right?" and, "Is it true that drinking too much soy milk will make dudes grow boobs?" (The answers to questions a, b, and c, by the way, are: "no," "no for the third time" and, "sigh. no" in that order.)

We also poured through Morgan's vegan cookbooks. I initially approached them with caution since, as a rule, I don't trust words that contain inappropriate Zs (See: "skillz," and "lolz."). They usually flag a reality-dodge. When they show up in the supermarket they're trying to say, "this product has a touch of whimzy." But, what they're really saying is, "if we use an actual food-related word to describe this stuff, we'll get sued by the FDA" (See: vegan/Kraft Company favorite "cheez.") Eventually though, I let my guard down enough to try a recipe for brownie banana pudding cake out of Vegan with a Vengence. After that there was no turning back.

In our studies, we quickly learned a few important lessons. First, we learned that there are many "normal" things vegans can eat besides lettuce. Many of our favorite soups, pastas, stir fry's and salads from home were already vegan or almost vegan to begin with. Second, we learned that some non-normal vegan foods are very tasty. Sure, there are some things I've tasted on my tour of the Garden of Vegan that I haven't quite been able to stomach. For instance, Tempeh still tastes like fermented birdseed to me. And seitan kinda has a chickeny texture...If, you know, chicken had a texture less like meat and more like a half-dried up glue stick. But, chili-glazed tofu is legitimately delicious. And Cashew cheez is actually pretty good. I've even come around to dusting my popcorn with a substance that looks like flaked fish food and is suspiciously vaguely called "nutritional yeast" (or, if you're my housemate Alison, "magic vegan dust").

All in all, living in community with a vegan turned out to be educational, rewarding, and a lot easier than I thought it would be. And that's good because, as it turns out, last year was just a warm up. When my new housemate Ryan told me he didn't eat gluten, I didn't blink an eye. I was feeling pretty cocky after last year's vegantation. (that's "vegan orientation."...What, are those non-threateningly alternative looking ladies on the cover of How it all Vegan the only ones who can use vegan non-words?) Soon though, he also stopped eating dairy, along with another housemate. Most recently Ryan has gone off soy as well. At this point, I feel like I'm in some sort of cooking video game where I have to level up every time things start to get too easy.

It's cool, though. I love to cook for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is that I like to make people happy. (Fine, or "like me." Again! Potato, potahto! Get off my back!) On any given day people with major dietary restrictions are crossing their fingers that they can find something to eat that won't make them sick. So, it's especially gratifying to make things for just for them that are edible AND delicious. I'm willing to keep learning.

Also, once I figure out how to make lasagna free of the eight most common allergens, I'll be able to run for president.

Stay tuned for Vol. 2 soon! I thought about going on to the next subject in this entry, but I've been testing your patience with the length of these posts for a while. Hopefully the next one will be prompt and brief!

Terror After Dark

Well everybody, the smoke on the birthday candles has cleared. Instead of indignantly yelling, "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" when someone asks me why I'm drinking rum punch and eating pizza rolls while watching an American Idol-athon on a weeknight, I must simply sigh, "it's my life."

I feel like the same sort of thing happens to me every year. I wake up on the morning of February third and realize, "Holy crap. I'm a twenty-something. I'm the same age as the people they make sitcoms about. I should be living in an unrealistically expensive looking loft in Manhattan -- across the hall from my unrealistically good-looking and witty pals. I should have a job as a chef, fashion buyer or soap-opera star. I should be sweetly yet assertively eye-flirting with handsome men who buy me pom-tinis in trendy nightclubs. Instead, I spent a whole day last week reading internet plot summaries for horror movies I was too scared to see. Then, I couldn't sleep because even the summaries were too scary so I watched three bootlegged episodes of Fraggle Rock in a row. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE???"

So what do I do. Do design a life plan? Do I research grad schools? Revise my reading list? Vow to exercise more? No, of course not. I come crawling back here to my beloved, spurned Unnecessary Anxieties. At this point I feel like a negligent movie-dad. Every year or so I Stumble back to the wife and kids after a particularly rough night of, say, smarmily betting on underground cockfights. I have my hat in my hand and I declare that this time it will be different. This time I'll stay for good and we'll all go get ice-cream in the morning! In my heart I really do believe it, but I can never keep my promise. I have a roguish wanderlust in my soul that cannot be contained for long. (Or maybe just a lazy-ish American-Idol-lust. This could be where the metaphor breaks down...) Anyway. I know I've talked about "weekly updates" before and it's been a "load of crap." This time, I'm not making any lofty promises. I'll do my best, but I'm not asking you to believe that it's going to last this time. I'm just saying we might as well ride this wave of post-birthday-glow blogging guilt for as long as it lasts.

Now that that's out of the way, do you guys want to hear a horror story?

It's a psychological thriller that -- I'll warn you right now -- has a pretty unsatisfying ending. But! the first part is full of tension and fear and the heart-thumping threat of apple-seed-sized nighttime invaders.

It all began a few months ago. I don't really remember what the weather was like but, for the sake of the genre, lets say it was idyllic. Shortly after I arrived at work, I noticed three small itchy bumps on the inside of my elbow. Without thinking, I asked my co-worker, "huh. What do you think bit me here?"

She raised her eyebrows "When did you notice the bites?"

"Just this morning."

If we had been in a movie, this would have been the part where the ominous violins in the soundtrack would have swelled to a screechy halt.

Betsy said, "Bedbugs?"

Dun dun DUUUUUN!!!!!!

At that point, I should have gripped the edge of the table, leaned forward -- intense Jack Bauer interrogation style -- and growled, "I'm sorry, I must not have heard you properly. Did you say bedbugs?"

Then, Betsy would have gotten the message and been all, "did I say bedbugs? I meant...Fredbugs. That's what they call mosquitoes in...Australia? Or something. Those bites are definitely the work of Fredbugs."

Then I would have leaned back and forgotten the incident within a matter of hours. But no. The seed had been planted.

I spent the rest of the day examining all the potential "bug bites" on my arms and legs. At that point, all I knew was that bedbugs bite people at night, and I remembered our LVC city coordinator mentioning that bedbug bites tended to show up in rows. I needed more information. My internet searches started innocently enough. I just wanted to find out what bedbugs looked like and how to identify their nests. I figured would be immediately assuaged and the whole matter would be put to rest. But you've met me. You know where this was headed.

The websites I visited gave me little conclusive information. Sure, they showed pictures of bugs and bites and listed signs to look for, but they also all said that the bites look different on everyone and, though there are some common signs, they aren't present in every case. They also said that it might take a trained professional hours to confirm the presence of bedbugs. Now, if it worked properly, my brain would have taken this information and put it through a mental mill of rationality and come up with something reasonable like, "I don't seem to see most of the common signs of bedbugs. I probably don't have them, but I'll wait a few nights and them call an exterminator if I keep getting bites." Instead, my brain put this information through a mental mill of paranoid CRAZY and spit out a red alert that went something like, "If you have any sort of bug bites or itchiness, it could be bedbugs. Actually, it's probably bedbugs. They leave no trace, they just invade your home and your nightmares without warning. Call an army of exterminators NOW. They probably won't be able to help but IT'S YOUR ONLY HOPE!" My brain is the Fox News of brains.

And this is all from reading un-exaggerated facts from respectable sources. As it turns out, those sites were just gateway pages to the hard stuff: forums and testimonials. Once I became completely and irrevocably convinced that I had bedbugs, I figured I'd better read some stories from others who had dealt with them before. Once again, I expected to find encouraging stories from people who had fought difficult battles against the critters, but ultimately emerged victorious. I am an idiot. If the internet could have talked to me after I delved into this murky abyss, it would have been like, "Dude. What did you expect? I convince adolescent girls that they can get pregnant by holding hands with boys when their hair is wet."

I found no comfort. Rather, I found something like what country songs would be if Wes Craven wrote country songs. I read dozens of stories from people who broke up with their boyfriends, gotten fired from their jobs, lost all their friends and abandoned all their earthly belongings, including their homes and the clothes on their backs. Sometimes twice. All because of bloodsucking bugs.

Now, if you know me well, you may have already guessed that all this "research" was interspersed with a series of phone calls to my mother. They escalated in panic-scale like recordings on a doctor's found tape recorder in a zombie movie, where the first recording is like, "There's a patient on the fourth floor who keeps trying to eat the doctor's brains. Interesting." Then, recording five is like, "AAAGH ZOMBIES!!!!! *gruesome chomping death sounds*"

Likewise, my first call went, "Mom? I think I might have bedbugs. I'm kind of upset about it but, worst case-scenario, LVC will pay for an exterminator and they'll take care of it."

Fast forward to call six: "MOM I HAVE BEDBUGS AND I'M NEVER GONNA SEE YOU AGAIN!!! *hysterical sobs, a la Van Der Beek* I'll send you a postcard when I've selected the park bench that will serve as my new home."

Other than these calls to my mother, I kept my fears to myself for a few days. Eventually though, I knew I was going to have to have a professional exterminator perform an inspection. To do that, I was going to have to tell my housemates that I suspected bedbugs / that all of their lives were permanently ruined. I approached them one Saturday morning and took a deep breath: "Um guys? There's something I need to tell you. I didn't want to scare you, but it's been bothering me for a while and, um, I just really need to get it off my chest...I've noticed some mysterious nighttime bug bites and I think it may be...um....bedbugs. And this is why I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to make your faces do that." Granted, their faces were probably doing "that" due to the fact that my cryptic windup had convinced them that I was about to tell them I was pregnant. But I didn't understand that at the time. At the time, I just hung my head.

Now, this is where it gets anti-climactic. That tends to happen in my stories when I get to the part where I reveal whatever X-Files have been gestating inside of my head to real people. Real people don't try to convince me that I'm going to have to relocate to Mongolia nearly as often as the internet does. I called my city coordinator who sent an exterminator to do a free inspection. When the exterminator came, I would have felt a sillier if he hadn't been on the phone with another hysterical client who was begging him to preemptively bedbug-proof her home. With my room, he was quick but thorough and firmly declared it bedbug free. It took me a few weeks to stop checking my sheets for bedbug poop every morning, but I got there.

Now for the epilogue: A few weeks ago I had a meeting at work with a Baltimore City government employee who does presentations on a number of public-health related topics, including bedbugs. He brought a vile with him that contained a few dead bedbugs for me to see. I was surprised at how tiny they were. Whenever I see them marching across newspaper articles and TV news segments, they're blown up to look like they're the size of hamsters. No wonder bedbug hysteria is sweeping the nation. Yes, there is something innately scary about parasites that live where you sleep and feed on you under the cover of darkness. But, these news outlets certainly aren't NOT feeding into that fear by making bedbugs look like they're big enough to give a Shi-Tzu a black eye.

Don't worry guys. I've learned my lesson about sensationalist media this time. No more internet "research" for me. Well, no more after I read this one thing on Yahoo News about Cat Flu.

What?

Adult Life-Skills 201: Landlord Communications

Hey Liberal Arts institutions of America? I want to talk to you about something. Kenyon, I know you're real smug about the fact that, last year, 39% of your incoming freshmen were in the top 5 % of their graduating high school classes. Your student body is very book-smart, I will give you that. But outside of academia? You and I both know that all kids living away from home for the first time are street-dumbasses. What your admissions web-page doesn't say is that probably about 25% of your incoming freshmen will try to clean their underwear with fabric softener for at least a semester and a half before someone tells them it's not soap.

I'm not saying we should ditch the whole liberal arts system. It was my honor and privilege to be educated in analysis, composition and discourse by some of the greatest English literature instructors in the country. It's just... I'm not going to unclog my shower drain by deconstructing Jane Austin's utilization of the pen as a phallic symbol at it.

Now I know I've lamented my unpreparedness for the adult world before. I mean, let's face it. Most of the time this blog is the lamentiest lament-fest that ever lamented the lament-ernet. I'd like to change that though. Maybe that's why I haven't updated this blog for so long. It may have looked like I was neglecting creative endeavors in favor of binging on Youtube clips of baby animals crawiling in and out of various dishwares, but maybe I was really pondering ways to make this blog a more constructive and positive space. Or, maybe I'm full of crap and you should just enjoy this rare moment of my being a "problem solver" -- as my mother would say -- while it lasts before I go back to ranking all the moles on my body from least to most likely to be cancerous. You pick. Either way, world, I'm about to blow your mind with my present problem solving skillz.

Here's my proposal: How about, in addition to Fine Arts, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, students also have to satisfy requirements in practical survival in the real world? Here are some sample course titles that you can have for free:“57 surfaces you didn't know you had to also clean”, “ Mold: it’s not just for food” and “Writing e-mails with real words only”. I know you're skeptical, but yes -- those ideas really are free! And, you know what? To show you that I'm serious about making this work for all of us, I'll even provide you with a whole sample blog-ture! (For you stuffy academic types, that's like a lecture, only on my blog. So it's still educational but, like, waaay hipper. And I know all about hip. Just ask my pal...um...Jay-Z. Edward Cullen? Miley Cyrus. hip things.)

Anyway! Without further adieu:

Lesson one: Landlord communications.

First, I know, I know. Most college courses are taught by people who have dedicated their entire adult lives to studying the topics they teach. Professors utilize their knowledge of statistics, case studies and the pulse of scholarly opinion to educate their students. And you know, good for them. I'm sure their "lifetimes of study" make for lectures that are total snooze fests. I mean...total information fests. But, what I offer is even better. I'm going to educate you with mistakes that I mySELF have JUST made! I'm 'bout to get REAL with you guys. Let me tell you what I've BEEN through! Case studies may have the "facts" on their side, but what about rawness? I eat case studies for breakfast.

Ahem. What? Anyway. Class, let me introduce you to our topic of study: The ever-mercurial American Landlord. (cue dimmed lights and slide show with pictures of generically slimy looking middle aged white men lazily copied and pasted from Google images -- Like this one!)

(fun fact: 98.2 percent of all landlords have creepy mustaches. Other fun fact: 100 percent of all mustaches are creepy.)

He owns your house, but he's not supposed to live in it with you. He's responsible for repairing your leaky pipes, but he will not scrub the pink ring your lavender-nectar goat-milk bath bomb left caked onto the tub. He'll probably come around to check on the unit you're renting every once in a while, and he has an emergency key to your house, but he is not your RA. If you dissolve into tears in his bean-bag chair over how your roommate got Ramen juice on your comforter AGAIN, he will not be helpful. He may call the police, actually. He'll be upset you if you do any permanent damage to his property, but he won't write you up if he finds jell-o shots in your fridge. It's all very nuanced and confusing, I know. So, unsurprisingly, it's pretty easy for landlord and tenant to misunderstand one another.

For example: My landlord's name is Steve Jones. Usually, I try to avoid using people's full names on this blog so as to protect their privacy (or so they don't find out I've been badmouthing them behind their backs when they Google themselves. One of the two. I forget which...) But, I figure I can make an exception in this case because Steve's name is so generic it sounds like he's a fictional person in a hypothetical scenario. My housemates and I met him shortly after we moved into our new house this year, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Then, mice chewed holes through the walls, the shower turned lukewarm in the dead of winter, and pretty much the whole house started leaking. So, we contacted Steve Jones. Texting is his preferred mode of communication so we texted him things like, "Our whole house is leaking. Please fix it," and he texted things back like, "Will do! As soon as it stops raining. For 90 days. Or more." As the weeks went by, our relationship grew more gnarled with distrust and loathing with each pointed text message. Here is a rough re-counting of one exchange that sticks out in my memory:

Simunye House: Steve, Our garbage disposal is broken again and the sink has stopped draining. Please let us know when you can fix it.

Steve Jones: Won't be able to come until the weekend because of work. Last two times Garbage disposal stopped, there were things that weren't supposed to be there. First a screw, then a twist-tie. When we come to fix it, Someone should be there so we can show you how to fix it yourself next time.

Clearly, these are text messages sent between two parties who are doing a poor job of understanding one another. I can tell you that when we read this message and others like it, my housemates and I assumed that Steve Jones was a cheap, apathetic jerk who didn't care about our living conditions. Obviously, Steve Jones made some assumptions about us as well. So, let's do a little exercise to try to understand Steve's motivation for sending this message. Let's take a look a dinner table conversation at my house community through Steve's eyes:

*Alison: Hey, could you pass the fruit salad?

Angry at Steve for No Reason One: Sure, here you go.

Alison: Thanks for the salad, Angry at Steve for No Reason One. Hey! There's a screw in this salad!

Extra dumb one: Oh, Whoops! That must have fallen in when I got the drill mixed up with the hand mixer again! I guess I'll just shove it down the garbage disposal.

Whiny one: OK

Alison: Yes, do that.

Angry One: Sounds like a good plan. You Guys, I've been thinking. Obviously, it's cool to throw food, hardware, used sponges and plastic with recycling numbers one through eight down the garbage disposal like we've been doing, but here's my question: How can we break it quickly? I'm so excited to make our lame-lord to drive ALL the way down here for essentially no reason other than that I love inconveniencing him.

Dumb One: Heh. Lame-lord. Good one. We could try a twisty tie.

Angry one: Excellent idea.

Whiny one: ...Sigh.

Alison: What is it, whiny one?

Whiny One: Oh nothing. It's just that, lately, I've been having to take showers about two-and-a-half degrees lower than I like. And I mean, whatever. It's not a big deal...It's just that it's not exactly the way I want to start my day, you know?

Alison: No, no. I completely understand. In a world where so much is out of your control, you deserve to have showers your way. Have you tried waiting for the water to warm up for 30 seconds or so before you get in the shower?

Whiny one: Who do you think I am? Paris Hilton, woman of leisure? You think I have time to wait 30 seconds to get in the shower just because our pipes are "old"? I have, like, a job you know.

Angry one: Just text Steve. Who cares if he can fix it or not. I hope he's in a meeting right now and forgot to turn his phone off.

Alison: Oh, way ahead of you. I started composing a text message to Steve the minute you said, "sigh".

AND SCENE

Now, class, what have we learned from this exercise? If you think I am working up to a tidy resolution with this lecture, or some sort of abstract, sweeping "life lesson," you are sorely mistaken. What do you think this is, real school? I'm just here to talk to you straight about the real world, and the best piece of advice for you I can squeeze out of my experience is: don't communicate with your landlords through text messages. When you're working with a 160-character limit, a lot gets lost between the lines. A while back, Steve Jones came to visit us, and we had a pretty positive exchange. Face to face, we remember that Steve Jones doesn't spend all of his time stroking his white fluffy cat with his bionic claw arm while ignoring our text messages. And he can see for himself that we don't spend all of our time making out with Robert Pattinson posters while we inhale nail-polish remover fumes.

Class dismissed!

So, what did you think, Liberal Arts Colleges? It's OK if you can't let me know right away. I know an academic shift like the one I'm proposing would be a big step, so you're going to need to discuss it at length with your faculties and boards of trustees. You're going to have to work pretty hard to convince that one extra uptight old-lady trustee with the tweed skirtsuit and the pearls and the super-severe french roll in her hair and the poodle she carries around in her Berkin Bag who keeps talking about how this just isn't the way things are done here. (That's how boards of trustees work, right? I'm basing all my knowledge of the subject on the movie Tommy Boy, and the scenes with the stuffy grandparents in re-runs of Gilmore Girls so I'm just guessing here.) Anyway, the point is, I'm willing to wait as long as it takes. If you need me, I'll be right here every week (...to six months) with more free ideas you can use (maybe). We'll be in touch!

*I figure Steve Jones doesn't know anyone's name in my house except for Alison, who was tasked at orientation with being the liaison between our house and our landlord. To him, the rest of us are probably just an indistinguishable mess of mostly girls.

Kids, go ahead and try this at home...

Hey all. As you can probably tell by my severely delayed blog entry this week, I'm starting to run a little low on blog ideas. You guys. Creativity is super hard. How do you think Faulkner did it, Book after book? Maybe his creative process didn't involve eating pizza rolls and watching episodes of Australia's Next Top Model on YouTube for hours on end.

Anyway, because nothing funny or interesting has happened to me in the last few weeks, I'm going to regale you all with a classic tale from days gone by. It's another one of those stories that I know you've probably all heard before, but I really feel it merits the dignity of being committed to writing here, in this most noble and prestigious of archives.

So now, ladies and gentleman, I present to you the "would you rather" story.

The scene was a long, late car ride back from one of my brother's away hockey games. My mom was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and my sister Abby was in the back with Miranda, her best friend since elementary school. Whenever they get together, they have a habit of reminiscing loudly about their colorful schoolyard days: A simpler time filled with wall-ball and bowl haircuts. (If you ever have the pleasure of sharing an elevator with the two of them, ask to hear about the time Abby got a 'fix-it plan' for putting Benjamin Shoecard's backpack outside. You won't be sorry.) Tonight though, everyone was tired, and we'd left anecdotal bliss several miles behind us.

Abby decided to fend off boredom by engaging us in a few rounds of "would you rather," that favorite parlor game of indecisive middle-schoolers and fratty philosophy/"co-ed studies" -- heh heh. Dude. Get it? -- majors everywhere. Abby kicked things off with a number of fairly traditional juxtapositions including but not limited to, "would you rather lose both your legs or your right arm," and "would you rather eat your own toenail clippings every day for the rest of your life, or have a giant toenail growing out of your forehead like the visor of a baseball cap?" When our tired brains started grinding and smoking, Abby explained to us that it's best to shout out your gut reaction before your head has a chance to tie itself in knots. After a few minutes, Miranda thought she had gotten the hang of it and decided to try one of her own.

"OK," Miranda said, "Would you rather have a giant unibrow..."

"Wait." Abby interrupted, "can you shave the unibrow?"

Miranda thought for a minute. "Yes," she said, "but it grows back really fast in the same day."

"Got it. Go ahead."

Miranda started over, "OK. Would you rather have a giant unibrow, or..."

we all leaned forward in anticipation.

"...or be a wolf boy?"

I'm gonna let that sink in for a minute: Or be a wolf boy. Here are some pictures to help you visualize the choice presented to you:

Unibrow...
...Aaaand wolf boy:


"Unibrow!" My sister shouted. Then, "Wait. What? Who would pick wolf boy?"

We laughed about it then, but listen: I think Miranda has really stumbled on to something here. Kids, if regular would-you-rather questions are making your flimsy brains feel like spaghetti milkshakes -- if they cause you to have warped nightmares about middle school multiple choice tests and your housemates all wake up, night after night, to the sound of you mumbling, "A: Cheese...No, B: toilet bowl! No! I meant cheese! Aw man, this SO wasn't in the study guide..."-- Maybe you'd like to try the lighter, gentler Mirandafied version of the game. I've got a few prompts to get you started. I'll wait here while you get a pen so you can write these down.

Ready? Here goes:

Would you rather have a hangnail OR...chop all your toes off?

Would you rather eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich OR... eat leaded paint chips?

Would you rather watch "Finding Nemo" OR... watch a bunny get eaten by a boa constrictor?

Would you rather ride a bicycle OR... set fire to your eyelashes?

Would you rather share a pudding cup with the cast member of "Saved By the Bell" of your choice OR... lick the under-side of a cow?

Really, the sky is the limit. Feel free to kick back and be as uncreative and lazy as you want. This new low-cal version of would-you-rather is like the car-game equivalent of taking a nap in a hammock. Which, by the way, I would rather do than eat my own bedsheets.

Jinx: Chapter Two

Before we begin, I'd like to warn you that this post contains some content of a graphic nature. If you have no interest in hearing about the health problems my "delicate bits" have encountered over the past few months, stop right after "dream catchers."

Dudes, in the interest of full disclosure, there's something I have to tell you: I am listening to Demi Lovato of Disney Channel's "Camp Rock" fame right now. And it didn't even happen by accident. It's not like I was looking at some snarky blog devoted to lambasting whatever girl the "cute" Jonas is dating this week, and my hand slipped over the link to her new single. I just suddenly found myself thinking, "Hey, you know what would be awesome to listen to right now? Someone who's voice sounds like what would happen if Avril Lavigne swallowed a rainbow cloud full of Lisa Frank panda bears, and who looks like a teen-aged American Girl doll. I better get me some Demi, stat!" That doesn't really have anything to with anything. I just thought you should know in case you find this post lacking some of my usual bite. If I can't find the energy to make any good jokes, it's because I'm mesmerized by the dulcet tones of what can only be an electric guitar made of cotton candy and dream catchers.

Also, I wanted to provide you with that bouncy sparkly YouTube link because I thought it might help to balance out the dark tale I am about to tell. As most of you know, I have a long history with jinxes and curses. For most of my adult life, I couldn't get from point A to point B without some hexed talisman of doom -- ranging from plane tickets to underwear -- waylaying me somehow. And yet, in the past year, I've ridden on a number of planes without having to pay hundreds of dollars to fix any stupid mistakes. I was beginning to think I was through with curses all together!

I should know better by now, shouldn't I?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the new, darker cloud over my life's journey: the health care curse. (Or, if you're my mother, you call it "selective hypochondria." But again: potato, potahto). I've already written about my first medical emergency in this blog, but I didn't know then that that incident merely marked the emergence of a larger pattern.

Shortly after I arrived in Baltimore, I noticed a sore growing on my...well I'm a nice Midwestern girl who's been conditioned to blush at any words more dirty sounding than "uvula" and "masticate". So, let's just say it was on my "hope chest." OK, you know what? Never mind. Calling it that is even yuckier than just saying that it was on my breast, which is where it was. Anyway. At first, I tried that good ole' Minnesota method used for dealing with everything in the heartland from cold sores to interpersonal conflict: Ignore it and it will go away. After two or three months though, it became clear that the traditions of my beloved lake land had failed me. Instead of going away, it got worse. I had no choice but to take action.

So, naturally, I thought: "well, I could spend a few hours figuring out how health insurance works (Seriously Obama! What's taking so long?), track down a clinic that will admit me and then get off my ass and actually go there...OR I could stay in bed and anonymously consult thousands of idiots at once who have no idea what they're talking about. Also, my fear of death is pretty much neck-and-neck with my fear of doctors. Hmm...Internet it is!" My first few Google passes were unsuccessful due to my reluctance to type icky words like "breast" or "areola" into the engine. When my vague, dainty searches for things like "rather embarrassing medical dilemma" did not yield the results I wanted, I was forced to get a little more specific. What I found then was troubling, to say the least.

Now kids, we all know that the internet is good at many things. Finding instructions for how to build a cake shaped like a pony; watching videos of babies wrestling cats; and trying to figure out where you recognize ubiquitous 90's actor Steve Zahn from; are all things the internet is great for. Turns out, the internet is also really good at convincing you that you have a terminal illness. After a bit of poking through forums and google answers, the internet had convinced me that it was most definitely one of two things: Either I needed to take a break from breastfeeding, or I had cancer. Since I haven't ever breastfed anyone that I can think of, I felt pretty confident diagnosing myself as a terminal case.

So I called my mother. I thought she might like to know. When I told her my woefull story, she calmly informed me that it was statistically improbable that someone my age had breast cancer. In retort, I quoted the story -- as told by medicalhorrorstories.com -- of the girl who was diagnosed with three or four rare forms of cancer at age 19. My mother did not seem as concerned with this concrete evidence of my incurable condition as I was. She just made me promise to stop doing independent internet "research." She also suggested I see an actual doctor.

Since my mother is always right, I set out the next morning to take her advice. But, I was hampered by the fact that all my knowledge of America's health care system comes from what I've seen on Grey's Anatomy, where they wouldn't deal with a small blemish like mine unless it had grown a heartbeat and a tiny pair of teeth. What kind of doctor did I even need to see? A general practitioner? A mammary specialist? A world famous neurosurgeon with great hair and a sordid sexual history with half the nurses at Seattle Grace??? My mother had suggested a clinic with an urgent care facility, so I tried calling a few of those first. Though the first few had never even heard of my insurance provider, I got lucky when I called the place that had seen me for my twisted ankle. It was an hour long bus ride away, but I was just relieved to know that my insurance card had not, as I was beginning to suspect, been cut out of the back of a cereal box.

Once I got there, everything went pretty smoothly. Nobody flicked my insurance card or held it up to the light to see if I'd forged it with magic marker. The doctor I saw informed me I probably had a staph infection. She scheduled a mammogram (just to be safe), prescribed two antibiotics and some non-stick bandages, and sent me on my way.If it didn't look like it was getting better in two weeks, she said I should come back in.

The end.

Just kidding! What, you believed me? You think I got it right on the first try? HAVE WE MET? No. Of course it wasn't any better in two weeks. If anything it was worse. Logically, at this juncture -- after having been informed by the Patient First nurse I spoke to on the phone that I was already on the strongest antibiotics available -- I assumed that whatever I had was incurable. The fact that the Patient First doctor referred me to a "specialist" when I went back in did little to dissuade me from this opinion. Come on. I've seen Discovery Health. If you can show me one episode of "Medical Mysteries" that doesn't contain some variation of the phrase, "we saw every specialist in the country, but no one could figure out what was wrong!" I will give you a dollar. My prospects were looking dim, but at least I didn't have to see another doctor for two weeks while I was waiting for my appointment to arrive.

Until, of course, I woke up three days later with nifty rash all over my body. When I discovered it, my first thought was, "Seriously? I've come down with ANOTHER degenerative skin disease? What a horrible coincidence!" Shortly though, it occurred to me that this new symptom was probably connected to one of the medicines I was taking. Sure enough, when I checked my prescriptions, there was "sudden rash or hives" right next to "heart palpitations" under, "Seek immediate medical attention if you develop..."

This was when I became certain that I was going to die. I figured the rash was only phase one. During phase two, by throat would close up, and phase three was probably heart explosion. When I called my boss to let her know that I couldn't come in that day due to the fact that I only had a few hours to live, she offered to give me a ride to the doctor's office. I accepted. This was a good decision for a number of reasons. One was that I didn't want to waste any of my dwindling moments on Baltimore public transit. Another was that Pastor Alice's years of service as a priest in the inner city have made her exceptionally adept at dealing with hysterical people. When I got in her car, we had something like the following conversation:

Pastor Alice: "Are you crying?"

Me: "No..." sniff. "Maybe."

Pastor Alice: "You're going to be fine. I've had bad reactions to plenty of antibiotics before. It's not a big deal."

Me: "sniff."

Pastor Alice: "Have you called your mother?"

Me: "No. I figured they'd do it for me after they admit me to the hospital."

Pastor Alice: "Sigh."

Needless to say, Pastor Alice was right. When I got back to Patient First, I saw a new doctor who made no mention of hospitalizing me or calling my next of kin. She told me that one of the antibiotics I was on was notorious for causing negative reactions in patients. The rash would go away on its own in a few days as long as I stopped taking the drugs. When she took a look at my original problem, she didn't think it was a staph infection and prescribed a steroid cream. Once I was out of the doctor's office, I called my very loving mom who told me that I should feel free to let her know the next time I think I'm dying -- even before a medical professional tells me I'm not.

Thank goodness, the cream worked almost instantly. I kept my appointment with the "specialist" though, who confirmed once and for all that I did NOT have cancer. She also told me not to trust the internet, which I'm 75 percent sure my mother paid her to say.

Oh, and she said that if I continued to have problems, I should consult a dermatologist. Do those guys advertise on Craigslist or the sides of buses? 'Cause if they don't, I'm gonna have to make a few calls. Has anyone seen the number for my phone-a-psychic?

Delicious Cookies: The C-Sell School of Culinary Arts

Did the title grab you? I'm experimenting with sensationalist tactics.

Guys, I know you're all expecting my trademark self-scathing-yet-tender-hearted-wit right now, but I can't find it. Seriously, I've looked everywhere. If you were my trademark wit, where would you be? My present theory is that it's hiding out in the part of my brain where I keep all the re-runs of X-Files episodes I've pretty much memorized, and is wrapped in the hypothetical snuggie I'm going to crochet for myself one day, snacking on the imaginary gingerbread castle with which I win "battle gumdrop" against Bobby Flay in my Iron Chef fantasies. Really, I don't blame it for hiding. Blogging every week (and a half) is really hard on that little guy.

So, this week, I've decided to give it a rest and try something different. You're probably thinking, "Caitlin, what else can you possibly try? The only things you know how to do that amuse us are telling stories about how bad you are at math and people and falling down." We'll you're right. I have nothing left to entertain you with, but perhaps I have something to teach you.

No no wait! Don't go! It's not about Dostoyevski or fractions or heart-thoughts, I swear. It's about cupcakes! Look, there are two things in life I know how to do very well: deprecate myself and make delicious cookies. Today, I'd like to take a break from the former and tell you a bit about the latter. Lots of people incorrectly assume that I'm a talented cook because I make good food. This is not true. I'm just a terrible cook who's been doing it for so long that I've made every mistake in the book before you met me and I fed you those delicious cookies. And you know what? You can make delicious cookies too. You don't even have to go through that tooth grinding "egg shell vs. egg white" debacle or that failed "flour and cornstarch are basically the same thing, right?" venture to do so! All you have to do is learn from my mistakes. I'd like to impart a little wisdom upon the recent college graduates of America who just learned the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons last month. (hint: the tablespoon is the big one).

Gosh, I've been giving unsolicited cooking advice for so long, I hardly know where to begin! To get things started, I'm going to elaborate on five of the passive-aggressive suggestions I most frequently make, hovering in the kitchen while other people are cooking.

1 "Yeah...that's going to need a few more minutes": Of all the free cooking advice I've doled out over the years, this is perhaps my most common refrain: When it comes to cooking times, trust your senses more than you trust the numbers your recipe has given you. If a recipe says, "Cook for 40 minutes, or until golden brown," This does not mean you get to pick one or the other. Your recipe is not a choose-your-own-adventure story. Or maybe it is, but I'm telling you: If you don't wait until that cake is nice and golden on top and the toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, your adventure is going to end poorly. Every oven is dishonest, and every cooking time in any recipe is an estimation. So, even if you have to cook your cake for twice as long as your recipe leads you to believe -- unless the recipe specifically tells you otherwise -- it's not done if it doesn't look and feel done.

In general, impatience is one of a cook's greatest foes. So set a timer and do something that will take your mind off your cakelust while those youthful blobs of batter take the time they need to mature into sexy full-grown cupcakes. Do some yoga perhaps, or maybe brush up on your Hebrew. Your good eats will repay you for it in the long run.

And P.S. While we're on the subject, never frost or assemble any baked good before it is COMPLETELY COOL. No exceptions. Watching frosting melt into a warm cake is like watching Lindsay Lohan's youth melt away: It was gone before it's time, it's never coming back, and no one feels good about it. So put that spatula down.

2 "Um, does the recipe call for 'low calorie non-dairy spread'?": Listen, I'm all for experimenting, but I'm telling you right now, this one will fail. When a recipe calls for butter, it's calling for fat. If you don't have enough butter on hand, margarine, shortening and even sometimes applesauce or oil can be used as substitutes. But butter spread, -- the stuff that comes in a tub and has zero grahams of fat -- is missing the whole point. You can't use it in your cookies or fry a grilled cheese sandwich in it for the same reason why you can't fry a grilled cheese sandwich in salted water: It's just not going to get the job done. Sure it will be healthier, but what's the point if your toast is burnt and your cookies taste like frisbees?

In general, I say substitute responsibly. Don't substitute a cup of this for a cup of that until a reputable source -- preferably one with an editor, publisher and copyright -- has given you detailed instructions on how to do so.

3 "You know we don't have a blow torch, right?": This one's kind of common sense, but even I get in trouble every now and then when I forget: Read the recipe from start to finish before you begin. Even if you've scanned the ingredients list without any red flags going up, the instructions may still be fraught with landmines. You don't want to wait until step eight -- where the recipe tells you to plug in your imaginary electric ice-cream maker -- to discover you've just made a batch of really rich, possibly toxic, chocolate milk. Likewise, you don't want to wait until the night of the big party to realize that, if you start now, your marinated chicken skewers might be ready for brunch tomorrow. If you're lucky.

Sidenote: Like ingredient substitutions, you can MacGuyver substitutions for a lot specialized kitchen equipment -- deep fryers, double boilers, steamers, etc. -- out of more common pots and pans. But, for my thoughts on all substitutions, see tip #2.

4 "No, it's not that I don't trust your judgment, it's just that I don't think allrecipes.com user "ChefTastykinsHeartsHottieBobbyFlay13" is the most trustworthy recipe author...": You already know that the internet is a dangerous place. You figured that out back when your eighth grade English teacher told you that Harry Potter fan forum poster "RaDcLiFfE*FoR*PrEsIdEnT" was not an appropriate secondary source for your book report on "The Chamber of Secrets." Online cooking resources are similarly hit and miss. If you don't know and trust the place your information is coming from, you're likely going to end up with a check-minus result. Cooking forums like allrecipes, cooks.com and Recipe Zaar, where anyone who wants can post recipes, are full of unclear instructions and incomplete research. At best, you could end up with a custard that won't set. At worst, you might give all your dinner guests salmonella as a party favor.

I'm not saying every recipe on the internet is shifty. The web is brimming with great, creative, easy to follow cooking instructions. But, I'd advise you to use the same criteria for an internet recipe that you would use for potential book-report source: Is the author clearly identifiable? Is it well edited? Are there any spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors? Does the website layout look like it was designed by dyslexic thirteen-year-old Hannah Montana Fan? Etc. If you wouldn't cite it, for Pete's sake, don't eat it! Though, if you must -- if KitchenHotttie69Degrees's recipe for Fruit Loop Casserole just looks too enticing to resist -- make the recipe on your own once (and maybe wait 24 to 48 hours after you've eaten it, just to be safe) before you feed it to your unsuspecting friends.

If you're interested in getting sucked into the world of internet cooking and you've got a few dozen hours to spare, this guy has a great list of trustworthy food blogs and websites to browse.

5 "You're the chef!":Usually, I don't mean this one passive-aggressively. No, really! I think a lot of people are intimidated by cooking because they don't think they know what things are supposed to taste like. But guess what? If you think it tastes good -- unless you have some kind of serious taste-bud malfunction that causes motor oil to smell like pancake syrup in your brain -- it probably tastes good. Recipes that say, "season to taste" aren't referring to some cryptic state of food zen that exists only in Plato's realm of forms. They're talking about YOUR taste. You say it's salty enough? Then it is! There's nothing wrong with asking for a second opinion every once and a while but ultimately, you're the one wielding the spoon. You call the shots. Just remember to add seasonings a little at a time and taste as you go, and your tomato sauce is going to be beautiful. I promise.

And now, I'd like to close with one of my most favorite recipes for cheap, simple and creative eats. People ask me for it all the time. (Or, people often say, "this isn't bad Caitlin," then I say, "I know! Let me give you the recipe..." Again, potato, potahto.) Anyway, without further ado, here's how you make Frying Pan Pizza:

Ingredients:

1 cup of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus a little more for frying
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few tablespoons water

Directions:

1. Mix flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. Add the oil. Then, add water two or three tablespoons at a time, stirring well after each addition. Add water until you have what looks and feels like a bread dough. The dough should stick together in a ball, but not to your hands.

2. Shape dough with a rolling pin or with your hands into a disc no bigger than the bottom of the medium frying pan your about to use.

3. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a medium frying pan. Fry your disc of dough for a minute or two on each side until it is golden brown.

4. Top as desired. If you want your toppings melted or toasted, put the whole pizza - toppings and all -- in the oven and broil on low for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly. Then, enjoy! For toppings, you can use traditional pizza toppings, or you can get as creative as you want. I've used baked beans and cheese, chili and onions, apple cheddar and brown sugar and fried potatoes and scrambled eggs.

This recipe is enough for one personal sized crust, but if you're feeding your friends it's easy to multiply by the number of people eating. Stir the dough up all at once, then divide it into individual portions after it's mixed. If you're having an extra crazy party, you can let your guests shape their own. Have fun! Let me know if you have any questions.

P.S. I'd like to dedicate this post to Anne, "Muffin Face," K. She recently turned 22, and girl knows what to do with a gas burner. Happy late birthday Muffin Face!