It all started because I wanted to park my cool minivan (ever
hear of sarcasm?) in our garage for the winter.
But shockingly, our garage was too full of stuff for anything
approximating the size of an automobile to fit in it. So after The Man and I updated our kitchen,
the old kitchen cupboards went up on the garage walls. Their job was to hold the stuff taken from
the big plastic shelving units lining the walls on the side of the garage where
Miss fancy minivan was going to be parked.
After all the wrangling and after recovering from an accident involving
a cabinet falling on my face due to failing to master a personal fault which
some—including my husband—call impatience (yeah, okay, so maybe I should have
waited for him to get home from work before trying to hang it by myself), the
coveted space was finally obtained. The
supercool minivan now sits contentedly in the garage, safe from rain and
snow.
After most of our stuff was corralled into wall cabinets or
taken to the basement, we ended up with two empty tall plastic shelve units. (You know the type--they come in a box and
you put them together. The supports are
round and they fit into one another. The
shelves are an open grid pattern.) I
decided to put the two units on the back covered patio until I could figure out
whether to take them to Mom’s (to help organize her garage mess) or find some other use for them in our overflowing
abode.
***All the above was written to explain why we had two big
stupid looking plastic shelving units on our back patio. (Didn’t want you to think we were some kind
of hillbillies or something. I mean
there’s no sagging old couch out there or anything like that. At least not yet.)***
Back to our story. The
Man had suggested we entertain some of our friends on a certain day. A little
history: When we renovated the basement
a few years back, The Man bought a nice projector and wired the place up for
surround sound. We made a 93 inch screen
and hung it on the wall. So we like to
have friends over to watch a movie now and then. Well, you don’t bring guests over and immediately usher them downstairs
to the “theater”—a time of preliminary chatting is necessary. That “chatting” needs to be done with snacks
in close proximity. I knew the ladies
were going to want to eat all “healthy” (blah), so a big pile of vegetables were
cut up and tucked into the refrigerator to await the evening. But not wanting to see the disappointment on
the men’s faces, I figured something involving butter and sugar should be made
as well. Lime squares and brownies (from
scratch) would do nicely. I like to throw a bunch of chocolate chips on
top of the brownies when they come out of the oven. They melt pretty quickly and can be spread to
make a sort of frosting. The only
problem is that it takes a long time for the chocolate to cool and harden. (And it’s difficult to “plate” them until the
chocolate is hard.)
A little more history:
One of my grandmothers was from a family of 10 children. Her father was an old school minister/evangelist
which, as you probably know, means they didn’t have a whole lot of material
goods. If there’s one thing she learned
growing up, it was how to be resourceful.
When I was a kid, she made a rag doll with me. Grandma dug out one of my mom’s old baby
dresses for my new rag doll to wear, and we stuffed her with old pantyhose—no
need to waste money on store-bought batting.
I like to think that resourceful gene was passed on to me.
Back to the brownies. It’s winter.
It’s cold outside. We have open
grid shelves (great for air flow) sitting on the back patio in our fenced backyard. May as well take advantage of
the conditions and put the brownies on those shelves to cool. May as well put the lime bars out there as
well. No point in sticking hot brownies in
the freezer and raising the temperature needlessly, right? I put paper towel on top of the pans and cooling
racks on top of the paper towel to make sure the paper didn’t fly off if the
wind kicked up. The pans were plopped on
the shelves on the patio. With that
done, it was time to retire to the bedroom to take a little nap before proceeding
with the remaining preparations.
While padding down the stairs after awakening from my
well-deserved nap, I remembered the baked goods and headed to the back door to
retrieve them. Oh the sight that met my
eyes when I opened that door! One of the
cooling racks was lying on the ground. The
paper towel, dirty and torn, was pushed off to the side. The now exposed brownies had been sorely
defaced. Big chunks were missing from
the beautiful brownie landscape. The
shelving unit was smeared with chocolate or dirt or both. (It was hard to tell which it was, both being
brown you know.) The horror of what must
have happened started to dawn on me—some despicable, deviant animal had torn
that cooling rack right off those brownies, cast the paper towel aside with his
filthy little feet, and had himself one big old gluttonous brownie party! (The lime bars, thankfully, had been spared.)
Needless to say, the whole pan had to be thrown out. Boy that made me mad. What a waste.
A whole new pan of brownies had to be made. As if there weren’t enough other stuff to do
before guests arrived. What could have
gotten into those brownies? It’s the
dead of winter. The shelves were within
a foot or two of the house. Could it be
the neighbor’s Alpha cat who roams the neighborhood looking for trouble? I didn’t think so. The only other animal running around that
could make it into our fenced yard would have to be a squirrel. But do squirrels even like chocolate?
The next day while standing in front of the window over the kitchen
sink (which looks directly out onto the patio), I looked up to see a big, fat,
filthy gray squirrel wandering around on the top shelf of the defiled shelf unit,
looking like he was trying to find something.
Ah-hah! It was a squirrel! Guess he was
coming back for his second course. What
nerve! And I declare he turned and
looked me square in the eye as if to say, “Yeah, what are you gonna do about
it?” Lessons learned: 1.
Don’t put your baked goods on the back patio to cool, and 2. Squirrels do like chocolate.
