The Sauce Situation

September seventeenth. I want to start by saying that the recipe had four steps. Four. I counted them specifically before I began, because I am a person who has learned, slowly, to check how many steps a thing has before committing. Four steps. A child could do four steps.

The tomato sauce is not the point. The point is the specific moment, about eighteen minutes in, while I was increasing the heat because nothing seemed to be happening, when the pot decided to have an opinion. I am not going to describe it in detail because Simone already did, in real time, in a series of texts to a group chat I didn't know she had, apparently. What I will say is that the cream sweater I was wearing is now a document of the event. I've washed it twice. The stain has opinions too.

Simone's face says everything the caption doesn't need to.

Simone was on the couch when it happened. She was in the kitchen approximately four seconds later, and to her credit she asked if I was okay before she started laughing. That's friendship. She also took at least three photographs before offering to help, which I think says something accurate about both of us. I moved the collapsed bowl off the windowsill last week, repotted Gerald, shifted things around, and the kitchen already looked slightly different, slightly more intentional. The sauce situation returned it to its natural state: mid-process, improvised, evidence of a person actually living here.

The forensic review.

We ordered Thai. The pot soaked overnight. I am going to try the sauce again at some point, probably on a weekend when I have more margin for error and Simone is somewhere she cannot photograph me. I'll report back.