A Wrench in the Works

I'm so glad there is all this attention out there about the Beatles. I love the Beatles! I'd get that new Beatles Game in a heartbeat! If I had a heartbeat. Which I don't.

Because I'm a zombie. A Test Kitchen Zombie.

Here's what is happening with me:

I've been working 12 hour overnight shifts. Now, these are called 'sleeping shifts' meaning that I'm guaranteed 6-8 hours of sleep during that 12 hours. It pays a flat rate and is much, much less than my normal hourly wage, but if it works, it's like free money: money while you sleep.

Unless the person you are caring for rings her little bell every flappin' 20 minutes throughout the night wanting her hair brushed, her sheets straightened, help transferring to the potty, etc; Then it's like Night Hell. And then when the 12 hours are over and you have to go do your NORMAL work shift and your NORMAL daily activities, it becomes DAY HELL...all blended together into a sort of zombie fog.

An Example: My doorbell rang yesterday just as I lay down for what I thought might be some catch-up sleep. It was my neighbor and he asked me if I had a wrench he could borrow.

And I could not for the life of me figure out what he meant by a wrench. My mind conjured up NO picture, and NO symbols and no definition of that word. Floating in the distance was a vague awareness that it might be a tool of some kind.

That's just how tired I am. And last night was the same only less sleep so today I was just longing to crawl into bed and remain there for the entire day.

Except when I went to my car to drive home, it wouldn't start. Dead Battery. I had to call AAA and have them deliver and install a new one for me, thereby wiping out my entire life savings and all my petty cash.

Good Times.

I made it home at last, closed the door behind me and relaxed on the bed thinking...Ahhhhh...when the phone rang and it was the Big Boss reminding me that on Friday we are going to be on TV doing a cooking segment.

And would I mind whipping up a few recipes and getting together a presentation and all that before tomorrow morning?

He had a few ideas and some guidelines (this is food for seniors, after all, and thus needs to take into account special dietary needs like low sodium, etc;) and then with perfect confidance that I was the girl for the task, he hung up the phone leaving me a jibbering idiot of fear.

And thus I whipped up these totally imaginary, utterly delicious, thoroughly sleep-deprived Zombie Pecan Muffins.

Anyone living in the Sacramento Fox 40 broadcast area can see me, the writer behind Miss Pink Ponsonby's Swell Soiree, on Sept. 11th, Friday morning, 8:55 am on Fox 40.

It will be a 10 minute presentation, and I've begged my boss not to let them mike me. He can make me go but he can't make me talk! Because I'll start babbling about wrenches, I just KNOW it!