“Oh, this is random,” she says, using her favorite introductory phrase. “I really want to make cookies tonight.”
Uh, sure, I say, secretly relieved. I’ve learned that “This is random” could mean any number of things, from a mundane question about the dirt in my car to the preface to an hours-long conversation that emotionally unhinges me for days afterward. I sigh with relief, inwardly. Besides, I’m never one to turn down free cookies.
She unfolds a piece of paper completely covered in scratchy, miniscule writing. “I wrote down some ideas—”
Wait, I interrupt. Is that all one recipe?
“No, I wrote down six or seven. I mean, I want to have my bases covered.”
She walks to my cupboards and starts rummaging through my dry goods. She rattles off a list of ingredients, none of which I have.
“Jeez, Dave, do you have anything?”
Kristen, how often do I bake?
“Um, never?”
Exactly. And besides, I don’t need to, with you around. I cook; you bake. Works out all right, don’t you think?
“Yeah, but what are you going to do if I’m not around anymore?”
Do you need a hand? I ask.
“No, I got it” she says, her hands kneading a not-quite brown glob of improvised cookie dough. “I don’t know,” she says, using her second-favorite phrase. “I don’t know how this will turn out. I kind of made it up as I went, and I think I might have messed this up.”
Only one way to find out, I say. We’ll know if it’s any good soon enough.
I take a couple photos of the table: the ingredients, the mixing bowl, empty packages, her recipe sheet—
Abruptly—”Did you just take a photo of my recipe?”
Maybe. Yeah. Was I not supposed to?
“Gosh, Dave,” she sighs. She walks over, grabs the sheet.
Kris, what’s wrong wi—
“I don’t like my handwriting,” she says, folding the paper back up.
Seriously? I laugh.
“Really!”
Kristen, your handwriting. Your handwriting!
“Well, I mean [*her third favorite phrase], it’s my paper,” she answers, stuffing the paper back in her pocket and smiling broadly. “Write your own recipes!”
7 Comments
Can you enable full feeds instead of snippets? It’s not like you’re getting ad revenue from views….
Ad revenue isn’t the reason why I do snippets.
I like Kris’s handwriting. It looks like insects — to an entomologist, always a good thing.
By the way, I don’t even know you, but I like your stories. And your random comments in my journal.
Cool, thanks.
The best part (and this is true of many people) is that she has no idea how entertaining she can be at times.
Having a very poor hand myself I think hand-written anything (esp. recipes) is the epitome of cool. As it is, I’m prone to over-reliance on my printer though, which is usually a waste of paper and ink, unless I shrink everything down to a minuscule 8pt font and destroy my eyesight…Come to think of it, I write very small by hand too.
btw: the leakypen is no more (had to throw the Langley spooks off my trail).
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