Today is Electric Boots' birthday and I'm trying to hurry and get this 'blog done so that I can go about doing all the prep-work so's I can leave for Dallas first thing after work tomorrow. I could give a crap about all these people hanging around the business center waiting for me to get done with the computer... I had to wait my turn. So can they.
I talked to her a little bit yesterday about how things have been going and she said she had a better understanding of the melancholy I associated with my birthday this year. We talked about how annoying it is that your birthday seems like the one time of year that you should be allowed to do whatever you want and have fun without having to feel guilty for being self-centered for a whole 1/365th of the year, yet it seems to get more difficult to actually do so with every year that passes. Having points of solidarity with my sister is a relatively new phenomenon (within the last five years or so) and it was a good conversation to have.
She decided that she wants to have a chili cook-off with her friends and family and invite people to get involved, so she asked if I wanted to cook or be a judge. I'm not gonna lie, the prospect of having to do nothing but eat is an appealing one, but the more I thought about it in the context of being her birthday and her party, the more I wanted to contribute something to the cause so that she wouldn't have to. I've been looking up chili recipes online and trying to get ideas from everywhere I can and Robbie's coming over in a bit to hang out while I throw it all together. It may not be very good, but I decided to give it a shot.
It might seem silly, but I'm excited about it. For one thing, I've never made chili, so I feel like we're all standing on the verge of finding out that I'm some kind of culinary genius when it comes to ground venison and spices. It's similar to the feeling I have when I'm standing in front of a blank canvas: I have no idea what's about to happen, but I am unreservedly confident in its impending awesomeness.
For another, I know this isn't going to go as planned. I deep-cleaned my kitchen earlier this week to give myself enough space/dishes to get through whatever abomination of food is about to happen to it, and I can only imagine the devastation my first venture into the land of chili will bring. If art school taught me anything, it's that nothing EVER goes according to plan and you have to be ready to make a gigantic freaking mess to get it done correctly and on time. And, for some weird reason, this only adds to the excitement for me. I love running into problems and having to figure out how to solve them and getting to the end of things and having not only a great result to show for all my effort, but a gigantic mess to prove how hard I worked. Something about leaving a trail makes me feel better about my effort. It's weird. But I like it.
Most of all, though, and she probably won't see it as much this way, but I feel like I'm doing this for her. Honestly, I'm tired and broke and I had to get up at 6 this morning so that I could have the evening free to make the chili and wrap her present and I have to be there at 6 tomorrow so that I can leave on time and I really don't feel like making chili or driving to Dallas or interacting with my family or dealing with whatever dramatic-hell is certain to break loose upon my arrival. But I love my sister more than anybody else I can think of and I can't wait to see her and, hopefully, impress her with a decent entry into her contest. And, sometimes, I think that showing love to other people is about doing a whole bunch of stuff you really don't wanna do just because you know that they'll be standing at the end of the line. It's like dealing with a really complicated and finicky padlock that requires a very particular and difficult to remember combination. I'm sure that, when all's said and done, I'll probably only get a solid hour or hour and a half of good, quality time with my sister in the course of things, but I value that enough for it to be worth it.
I guess maybe you have to know what kind of a-hole I've been in the past to understand why that's a big deal to me, but I don't really have time to get into all that right now. Right now, I've got a pot of chili to get started on so I can make it to Dallas on time tomorrow, and that's more important to me than anything else.
Happy birthday, Karen. I love you.
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