Almonzo, you’re cute and all, but we need to upgrade all the appliances. You can do that, right?

Last week, the hot water heater died at our house.

It died when I took a shower. Yep, it waited for me… patiently… and then WHAMMO, it decided to unleash its NON hotness on me whilst I tried to bat the water away and made squeaking noises in the shower.

This in fact happened twice. I attempted to take a shower on Friday night because, well, cleanliness and all, and noticed that the water was taking a bit longer than usual to heat up. Like, forever longer. I was actually so tired that I figured it was some glitch in infrastructure, that I needed to inform the hubs, and I squeegeed myself off in twenty seconds and went to bed.

Then, as my brain sort of works like Congress, as I was STANDING in the shower the next morning, my head went: “OH SNAP I WAS SUPPOSED TO TELL THE HUBS THIS IS SO INVIGORATING I THINK MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE WITH VIGOR.”

I mean, the frontier women showered like this pretty much every morning, right? If Laura Ingalls Wilder can do it, so can I.

No. Nope. No, I cannot, Laura. I’m sorry. Plus, you married someone named Almanzo, for Pete’s sake. Your life is weird.

Anyhow.

My sweet Not-Almanzo called a friend of his, and together they installed a brand new water heater that, you guessed it, pours REAL hot water into all the faucets! Like, whenever you turn them on, there it is! A modern miracle!

The biggest miracle of all…??

I made them cinnamon rolls as a thank you, and they actually turned out ok. The rolls, not the men.*

I think I have mentioned to you that I am a bit baking-challenged, right?

Case in point:

The famous Poo Cupcakes, circa October 2012, for the hubster’s birthday. He likes chocolate and peanut butter. Voila, I made him chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. The finished product was… interesting. In desperation to camoflage the poo, I sprinkled peanuts on top. This only increased the Wow! factor.

It’s ok. The hubs ate them, with vigor. His life is weird.

My baking ineptitude occurs, I think, because I enter pretty much every baking venture with this ideology:

“What… three cups? I’ll eyeball it. Hmmm… a teaspoon? Lemme just eyeball it. Huh, sifting. I’m gonna eyeball that. Brown frosting the consistency of the inside of a diaper after baby ate a jar of molasses? Sure, I’m not gonna think that one through at all. Let me just eyeball it!”

You get the idea. Lots of eyeballs. Not a lot of skill.

So, THIS time I tried something different. I found my mom’s REALLY REALLY OLD cookbook (sorry Mom, kinda threw you under the elderly bus on that one) and I found a recipe and… (drum roll)…

BEHOLD. I FOLLOWED THE INSTRUCTIONS!

And lo, it was good.

Which just goes to show… I’m not so half-baked after all.

(Half-baked used to be my thing. But that’s another post for another day.)

*The lawyer added an eye roll here and would like to note that this is the point in the blog post where becomes All About Me. I tell him it’s my favorite topic. I tell him, it’s the only way.