So, after getting my letter last week, I (at least somewhat subconsciously) started making a big mess.

First order of business? A new blog design. I decided that if (they say) I can’t write, the least I can do is have a prettier blog, with all the bells and whistles. That’s right: rather than working on my writing, my instinct is to gussy it up a bit. Kind of like shopping for new clothes rather than trying to lose a little weight so the old ones look good on you again.

I recognize that I have issues — I do. But its all part of my process. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

So I have thrown myself into hosting my blog on a new server, so that I can make beautiful thematic changes. Apparently, even though WordPress.org calls it a “painless five-minute process,” I am completely incapable of handling it. I am now buttering up my computer engineer friends to get their help. Kevin? Braden? Kyle? Help a girl out? I’ll bake you cookies. Because that’s what trophy wives do.

My blog will either be really gorgeous really soon, with a little help from friends, or I will be left to my own devices and it will disappear entirely into the vortex of The Interweb. Stay tuned.

I have also decided that woodworking is hobby that absolutely must incorporate into my already haphazard, schizophrenic life. I mean, why not? Jack of all trades, master of none — that’s me.

A while back, Rob’s mom gave us her old desk. It is a beautiful, behemoth piece of high quality furniture, with heavy drawers that lock and pull out on gliders. Not a square inch of particle board on this bad boy. And it’s certainly nicer than anything we own or would buy for ourselves. I mean, Pottery Barn would be our splurge, and they just don’t make stuff like this at Pottery Barn.

The only thing is that this desk is starting to look a tad outdated. Not so outdated as to be a hip statement piece. More like 1980s outdated, as in the person sitting behind this desk should probably be wearing head-to-toe pastel and a French braid. Which, of course, Rob’s lovely mother did in the ’80s, when that outfit and hairdo and desk style were all in style. (I know; I’ve seen a home video of it. There’s something about seeing your husband as an eight-year old with a mullet wearing a wolf sweatshirt and carving a pumpkin on the floor next to the desk that at age 28-almost-29 you use to run your so-called multinational corporation from the second bedroom of the condo that you rent from his parents … that makes you want to refinish that desk. I don’t know, maybe its just me?)

And so, I had decided to give this great piece of furniture a facelift. New hardware would have done the trick. A good coat of black paint would have gone even further. But that kind of stuff is child’s play for this experienced handy girl. It is high time, my friends, that I learned how to strip.

Varnish from wood, that is.

After hours of research and no fewer than six trips to the hardware store in four days, I am well on my way to making a complete disaster out of a perfectly nice-looking piece of furniture that I probably should have just left alone.

Here’s the desk before I started:

After some environmentally friendly fairly non-functional 3M Safest Stripper Paint and Varnish Gel Remover:

After some less-gentle (sorry, Liz!) but non-toxic and minty green Zinsser Magic Strip:

and the purchase of a Black and Decker power sander with a cute name that (blessed be!) sucks up its own sawdust:

I have to say, I feel like Bob Vila, restoring something to make it beautiful. (Only with less facial hair, and no plaid. I mean, no facial hair and less plaid?) And when I got that power sander going, I’m not gonna lie: I almost grunted like Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor. And, yesterday, as I smoothed my hands in long strokes over the desktop that I had just worked on for the better part of an hour, I felt like Carrie Bradshaw’s furniture designer boyfriend Aidan admiring his handiwork on the chair he made for her out of materials from an old pullman car.

[Sidebar: I recognize that, with every Sex and the City reference I make, I draw ever closer to becoming the trophy wife I do not want to be. However, I take comfort in knowing that I am less like the women who enjoy the delusion of likening their own lives to SATC than I am their husbands, who are out in the garage playing with power tools.]

Assuming that, come next week, I have a desk and a blog that are at least functional and at best aesthetically unobjectionable, I am pretty proud of myself.

Even Molly is impressed.

The funny part is that, bruised though my ego may be, I still truly and honestly like my writing better than that on the blog written by the woman in charge of the department (cancerbitch (dot) blogspot (dot) com — I won’t link directly; I may be disrespectful but I’m not rude). Reading her blog, and thinking mine is better, is what gave me the confidence to apply in the first place.

I realize that, in saying this, I’ve essentially ruined any chance whatsoever of being accepted to her program in the future. Not that I’d apply again. It’s not that I’m too proud; I just much prefer to relish the idea of someday being wildly successful on my own and having the opportunity to shove it back in their faces. You know, when they ask me to become an adjunct professor and I tell them exactly where and how they can get off.

Remember the movie The Mighty Ducks? My brother watched it over and over and over again as a child (as well as the Beethoven movies, and Home Alone, and home movies of himself waterskiing), so that I know the entire scripts of these classics by heart. Something about this one line in The Mighty Ducks stuck with me and has since informed my reactions whenever I find myself in a compromising situation. In his first (albeit failed and morally questionable) attempt at coaching his team, Emilio Estevez teaches the kids to:

“Take the fall! Act hurt! GET INDIGNANT!”

In another day or so, I’ll have done just that. And I’ll have a plan.

Northwestern can keep their crummy degrees, and I’ll keep my twenty grand a year (which, incidentally, is the brightest side of this all, as far as Rob is concerned; hello, down payment!). The college path has never worked out quite right for me, and I’m finished trying to play their game. I’ll go my own way. I never want to, but I always have to. I don’t know why I thought this time should be any different.

Happily, I had a lot to keep me busy over the weekend. Rob came home from work on Friday night with flowers, and before the sun went down — I repeat: before the sun went down — and took me to Hopleaf for enough porters and stouts and pommes frites with garlic aioli to make me seriously sick to my stomach.

I spent the rest of the weekend helping Jen set up her kindergarten classroom.

What can I say? I enjoy a theme, and we all know how I feel about manual labor. I may have missed my calling as a kindergarten classroom decorator, if there ever could be such a job. (I’m not foolish enough to think that I might be a good kindergarten teacher; just the thought of the five-year olds coming in and touching my beautiful handiwork with their grubby grubby paws is enough to send me into a tailspin.)

And tomorrow is another day.

First, I was told last Wednesday. Then I was assured they went out Monday morning. Today, I get this email:

Dear Amanda,

Best regards,

Graduate Admissions Office

So I hold my breath and log in.

Dear Amanda:

Best regards,
Graduate Admissions

WHAT?!?

So I email them back and ask if I should anticipate a more detailed message to appear in the system (seeing as how I logged in to the system a mere three minutes after the email was sent). The reply:

Hello Amanda,

Best,
Lori

Um, whaaa?

Also, yeah RIGHT. They were mailed on Tuesday. Yeah freaking right.

I might expire.

First, I was told last Wednesday. Then I was assured they went out Monday morning. Today, I get this email:

Dear Amanda,

Best regards,

Graduate Admissions Office

So I hold my breath and log in.

Dear Amanda:

Best regards,
Graduate Admissions

WHAT?!?

So I email them back and ask if I should anticipate a more detailed message to appear in the system (seeing as how I logged in to the system a mere three minutes after the email was sent). The reply:

Hello Amanda,

Best,
Lori

Um, whaaa?

Also, yeah RIGHT. They were mailed on Tuesday. Yeah freaking right.

I might expire.

In the interest of making myself feel productive, then, I’ll work on something else altogether: my blog. Has it really been two months?

I have had a decently severe spell of writers’ block, brought on mostly by anxiety about my writing, which, I suspect, is the cause of nearly all cases of writers’ block. Just about two weeks ago, I submitted my application for Northwestern University’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. This particular program has an emphasis not just on either fiction or poetry but on creative nonfiction, which is, for those of you unfamiliar with the term (as was I, even while I was writing it), at least in my mind, the delightful love child of fact-driven journalism and pure fantasy fiction.

Its storytelling for liars. It’s what I do. (What, you thought all those Molly stories are 100 percent real? OK, actually, they were, but I do come from a long line of exaggerators.) It’s what Dave Eggers does, and David Sedaris, though they are by no means my heroes, and mostly I can’t stand either of them, though, admittedly, that’s more likely out of jealousy than dislike of their actual work.

I found out about this master’s program back in January (and I’m not checking that fact because this is creative nonfiction, so I don’t have to. See how much fun it is?) and have been fretting about it ever since. At their informational presentation, I felt not at all unlike the way I did when I met Rob: immediately and hopelessly in love, but filled with instant dread, certain, as I was, that I was about to have my heart broken again.

When summer began, the application deadline loomed, and I became paralyzed by my own insecurity. I’ve been told all my life that I’m a good writer; I have even believed it. But then I will settle in at my kitchen counter with breakfast and The New Yorker, and Hendrik Hertzberg or some other brilliant writer will wrap up a “Talk of the Town” essay in the clever kind of way that actually makes you smile or smack your forehead, and all my confidence in my own ability ends up down the drain like the leftover milk from my cereal.

Oh, Hendrik, you are the Seinfeld to my Full House. I love you, but loving you makes me hate me.

Can I really write? Do I really have something to say, and can I say it in a way that is witty or artistic or original enough to make it worth reading — or publishing, even? Or am I destined to languish in a kind of self-aware mediocrity, in which I am good enough to recognize what’s good but not nearly good enough to actually do it? As I am with so many other things I love?

Of course, this blog post could be the nail in the coffin of my writing career — we hardly knew ye! — given that at least half of my writing portfolio for my application is pulled from this web site, and the program directors are probably at this very moment saying about my work, “…. Meh? … but perhaps we should look at her blog and give her further consideration.” They will happen across this very post and its pathetic collection of run-on sentences, and that will be that.

And then what will I do? And who will I be?

 … try again.

If I were a different girl, I’d stitch that on a sampler. But … well, you know. There would probably be blood.

I will have you know that that pizza was made with homemade tomato sauce (diced tomatoes mixed up with olive oil, salt, pepper, and torn basil picked from the “herb garden” on our deck) and multiple types of cheese and all-natural super-fancy pepperoni. All of which were purchased on a special trip to the grocery store today.

In case you were wondering, I ate the top off with a fork. Rob is at Subway.

On Saturday morning, the floors are sticky and disgusting. On Sunday morning, the floors are still sparkling, but the toilet is clogged.

So far, so good.

Then Rob proposes that he come home for dinner at 7. He even mentions that he’s in the mood for my ravioli bake — one of the few things I make that he will eat without comment or complaint.

Score one for me. Only the husband of a Good Wife wants to come home for dinner. And, this is an easy dish — I already have the ravioli in the freezer and a jar of Newman’s Own Mushroom Marinara in the cupboard.

I am missing, however, the third of this dish’s three ingredients — parmesan cheese — which I don’t realize until 7:09 pm, at which point I have started neither dinner nor the oft-lengthy process of coaxing Rob home from his office.

So I offer to pick him up (the only reliable way of ensuring his timely departure from work) after swinging by Dominick’s for parmesan cheese. I get the non-pre-shredded variety, and even grab a bunch of asparagus — a side dish? Look at her go! — and I’m beginning to feel redeemed.

Back at home, ravioli bake assembled and about to go in the oven when lo, what is that on the discarded pasta packaging? An expiry? Dated what, now? March? Of last year?

After a moment’s hesitation, the casserole is upended into the sink. Above the whir of the garbage disposal, I argue halfheartedly, with no one in particular, that the pasta is most definitely still good. Can frozen pasta really expire?

This is what I mean when I say I cannot cook. To be certain, I can whip together a veritable smörgåsbord of hors d’oeuvre, the recipes for which call for little more than the most basic assembly of ingredients and the heating of the would-be-safe-to-eat-even-if-uncooked final product for 30 to 45 minutes in an oven preheated to 350 degrees.

And I can bake. But anyone who can read and measure can bake, and that only eliminates about half of my sister-in-law’s kindergarten class. Surely, with my strong reading comprehension skills and sharp attention to detail (you can stop laughing now, Husband Of Mine), I should be able to cook.

But the fact remains: I cannot.

Perhaps with some advance preparation — an itemized shopping list and a special trip to the grocery store, a pre-selected menu of recipes that complement each other, a detailed schedule with specific instructions about how far in advance to turn on the oven, and perhaps a sous chef to assist with the multi-tasking inherently required in preparing multiple dishes at once — perhaps then, I might be able to cook.

But that would be just one night, and the entire process would require daily repetition, preparation in advance of the week’s shopping trip, the hiring of a staff. I could not do it alone. Let alone with a job, or a house full of kids.

And so, I maintain: I cannot cook.

And now, at half past nine, I stand in the kitchen, boiling the handful of rigatoni left over from some other month’s attempt at dinner, hoping it will amount to enough to feed at least one of us. It likely will not, but no matter: in the interim, Rob has devoured a bag of tortilla chips and I a half pound of cherries and a healthy portion of chocolate hazelnut gelato, straight from the pint. We’re not really hungry anymore, but we’re not satisfied, either.

Bad wife.

So far, so good.

Then Rob proposes that he come home for dinner at 7. He even mentions that he’s in the mood for my ravioli bake — one of the few things I make that he will eat without comment or complaint.

Score one for me. Only the husband of a Good Wife wants to come home for dinner. And, this is an easy dish — I already have the ravioli in the freezer and a jar of Newman’s Own Mushroom Marinara in the cupboard.

I am missing, however, the third of this dish’s three ingredients — parmesan cheese — which I don’t realize until 7:09 pm, at which point I have started neither dinner nor the oft-lengthy process of coaxing Rob home from his office.

So I offer to pick him up (the only reliable way of ensuring his timely departure from work) after swinging by Dominick’s for parmesan cheese. I get the non-pre-shredded variety, and even grab a bunch of asparagus — a side dish? Look at her go! — and I’m beginning to feel redeemed.

Back at home, ravioli bake assembled and about to go in the oven when lo, what is that on the discarded pasta packaging? An expiry? Dated what, now? March? Of last year?

After a moment’s hesitation, the casserole is upended into the sink. Above the whir of the garbage disposal, I argue halfheartedly, with no one in particular, that the pasta is most definitely still good. Can frozen pasta really expire?

This is what I mean when I say I cannot cook. To be certain, I can whip together a veritable smörgåsbord of hors d’oeuvre, the recipes for which call for little more than the most basic assembly of ingredients and the heating of the would-be-safe-to-eat-even-if-uncooked final product for 30 to 45 minutes in an oven preheated to 350 degrees.

And I can bake. But anyone who can read and measure can bake, and that only eliminates about half of my sister-in-law’s kindergarten class. Surely, with my strong reading comprehension skills and sharp attention to detail (you can stop laughing now, Husband Of Mine), I should be able to cook.

But the fact remains: I cannot.

Perhaps with some advance preparation — an itemized shopping list and a special trip to the grocery store, a pre-selected menu of recipes that complement each other, a detailed schedule with specific instructions about how far in advance to turn on the oven, and perhaps a sous chef to assist with the multi-tasking inherently required in preparing multiple dishes at once — perhaps then, I might be able to cook.

But that would be just one night, and the entire process would require daily repetition, preparation in advance of the week’s shopping trip, the hiring of a staff. I could not do it alone. Let alone with a job, or a house full of kids.

And so, I maintain: I cannot cook.

And now, at half past nine, I stand in the kitchen, boiling the handful of rigatoni left over from some other month’s attempt at dinner, hoping it will amount to enough to feed at least one of us. It likely will not, but no matter: in the interim, Rob has devoured a bag of tortilla chips and I a half pound of cherries and a healthy portion of chocolate hazelnut gelato, straight from the pint. We’re not really hungry anymore, but we’re not satisfied, either.

Bad wife.

Molly, on the other hand, having found a special treasure left behind by my neighbor’s toddler, is pacified.