Under normal circumstances, thirty bucks would buy me enough meatballs to last me about a month. Unfortunately, this time money wasn't going to cut it.
"Whaddaya mean you didn't make any meatballs?" I protested.
Squirrel shrugged. "You didn't give me enough notice."
"I did too! I called Mom and she said she'd tell you!" I sputtered. "I even remembered to bring money this time!"
My younger sister snickered. "The one time you remember...sorry, Mom didn't tell me until yesterday. I was busy with school anyway."
I groaned. "Now how am I gonna survive?"
"You could always make your own," Mom suggested with the air of someone who no longer had to risk her own kitchen.
I glared at her. "You remember what happened last time I tried to make anything from scratch?"
"Nope!" Mom replied cheerfully and whisked away with Squirrel to make Easter cookies. I rubbed my eyes, took a step forward, and promptly tripped over Mom's little rat-dog--er, "toy dog." Fortunately, our real dog Max generously broke my fall.
After Easter, I returned to my apartment still, sadly, meatball-less. This depressing state of affairs lasted for a whole two weeks, until I finally threw in the towel and threw on my blast gear to return to the kitchen.
Editor's note: GOOD LORD, NO!!!
There then followed a two-day delay where I kept forgetting to put out the meat to thaw, but one fine day I finally remembered. Armed with the cookbook Mom had given me, I headed back into the battle zone confidently and promptly blew up an egg, giving me a weird feeling of deja vu.
"What are we feeding our chickens? Dynamite?" I demanded of the world at large. The sink sneezed at me. I sighed and toweled egg and water off my face, snapping the oven on.
I began mixing my ingredients...eggs, spices, broth, and--oh, hey, the smoke alarm was still in the roof. I preemptively yanked it out of the ceiling; despite its aid in helping me find misplaced items that I left on the stove, I decided to rely on smoke signals as opposed to earsplitting shrieks. And then decided to go read a quick comic strip. It seemed appropriate.
Editor's note: We wish he'd reprogram his smoke alarm and STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN.
I put "reprogram the smoke alarm" on my list of things to do later and returned to the kitchen. Unwrapping the hamburger, I chucked it into the mixing bowl and returned to my sink to wash myself off. The sink restrained itself to a polite cough this time. I thanked it, took a half-step sideways to switch on the mixer, slipped in a puddle of water, and wiped out. I landed half-in, half-out of the dishwasher. I took a moment to nurse my bruised ribs, reflecting that if God had wanted me to take a shower that badly, he should have just emailed me.
A moment later, I was ducking for cover as projectiles hurtled through the air. A brief inspection showed the cause; apparently, I'd hit the mixer's "On" lever and flipped it to maximum during my fall. Meat ricocheted around the kitchen in some kind of a bizarre tornado. I sighed, snatched my nunchucks of the wall, and charged the mixer, attempting to deflect the larger pieces of meat.
Editor's note: The air tests free of hallucinogens. We are forced to conclude that he was cursed at birth by a wicked fairy to destroy every kitchen he stepped into after he turned sixteen. We doubt Disney will make a movie about this, though.
I managed to whack the mixer's lever back to "Off" with a skilled (read: lucky) strike. Taking a look around, I decided to thaw another package of hamburger meat while I scraped the first batch off the walls. Cleanup only took a half an hour, not counting the time it took to air out the apartment from the flaming hamburger on the stove. It appeared that, once again, I'd managed to mix up the controls for the stovetop and oven.
Editor's note: Where are the Avengers? Aren't they supposed to stop global catastrophes? Radar is the definition of global catastrophe!
I put the next batch of hamburger into the mixing bowl before realizing that I had no idea how much spice and egg had been hurled from the bowl by the mixer. Deciding that, under the circumstances, winging it was appropriate, I started throwing random amounts of ingredients into the bowl. A through blending later, and I was ready to start scooping it into balls.
To the cupboard!--no, wait, the drawer--no, wait, the refrigerator...oh, wait, I forgot to buy a scoop, didn't I? Nothing daunted, I began rolling the mixture into balls by hand, which turned out looking like pyramids for some reason.
Editor's note: Can someone explain that? We checked physics books, which are all unanimous in saying that those formations are impossible to make with a rolling motion.
I chucked the pan on the stove and set the timer, returning after a few minutes when I remembered that I had turned the stove off and the oven on. I made the appropriate switch and settled down with an ale to reflect upon the limitations of robotics in daily life.
And the meatballs turned out great.
Editor's note: We quit.
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