I think the secret of contentment must be in managing expectations. You see it often in self-help programs — for instance, in those abuse cessation programs that instruct you to live one day at a time and in yoga classes that remind you not to let your mind wander to tasks other than your breathing and your position.

Today was my birthday. I like birthdays in general and mine in particular, and I a big fuss. But I also recognize that not every year can be filled with fireworks and am perfectly content to settle for a little fuss and some out-of-the-ordinary activities. So for the last few days, I had been thinking up plans of how to fill the time before people had time to hang out with me in the evening. I had the day off and was going to start out early (for me) and pack the day full of exciting things like buying tulips and seeing lion cubs at the zoo and attending high tea or maybe a yoga class.

However, I’m not really an early (even for me) kind of girl and, when left to my own devices, find it really hard to get out of the Burrow before three in the afternoon. (My boss always finds it comforting to hear that it’s not just workdays when I have difficulty getting out the door in a timely fashion.)

And today was no different. I didn’t move quickly. Della wasn’t being overly cooperative about eating. I had put laundry on before going to bed that still needed to be hung up. I couldn’t find the jam I wanted and then when I picked a substitute, I couldn’t get the lid open. I had to address some envelopes I wanted to send out in today’s mail. So, I didn’t leave home until nearly three and when I walked out the door, I couldn’t decide which direction to go in, knowing there definitely was no longer enough time to fit everything in.

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NOTE: Karen, Amani, and anyone else who’s a little squeamish about food practices might not want to read this post.

SECOND NOTE: This would not be my methodology if there was company coming over, so please don’t be scared, Sarah.

I’ve been meaning to make lasagna for a while. It’s one of the few dishes I’m any good at cooking.

Step 1: Assemble ingredients.

Ingredient 1: Lasagna noodles. Is there an open box? Yes! In the cabinet. Let’s see. Three and a third noodles will not get us very far. I know I bought two boxes before the tree-trimming party that we ended up not using. Where would those be? Okay, here’s one of them. [The second will not be noticed for several more hours, despite its equally obvious location.]

Ingredient 2: Sauce. I bought a jar of baking sauce back in the fall. Yep, here it is on the floor. Maybe I’d better rinse the dust off it before I open it…

Ingredient 3: Ricotta. Hmmm… I stopped Rudi from throwing it out last week. I hope it’s still good. Maybe I’d better check before I open the jar of sauce. Good, it hasn’t been opened before. Nothing growing on it. Bodes well. It doesn’t smell funky. Should I taste it before I look for the mozzarella? Nah, it’ll be fine…

Ingredient 4: Mozzarella. Let’s see. Here’s the store-bought stuff we bought last winter. Best by … February 2010. It looks fine. Let’s open it up and get a closer look. Smells fine. A little rubbery, but it was supposed to be a dry one to begin with. I guess this I’d better taste. Bland, but that’s storebought cheese for you. Where’s the farmers’ market mozzarella? Okay, here it is. Hmmm… Did it dissolve into yogurt-like goo? Ah, no, that’s just the accumulated water and whey. Dump out the liquid. Oh! It’s little mozzarella balls! Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Rinse. Is that enough? Rinse. I’d better taste these, too. Hmmm… A little … sharp … but I don’t think I’d call them bad.

Step 2: Arrange ingredients in layers until the pan is full.

Noodles. Ricotta. Sauce. Storebought mozzarella. Noodles. Ricotta. Hmmm… It smells a little strong. Should I have tasted it before we started? Nah. Well … maybe. Okay, fine. I’ll taste it now. That’s … well, I can definitely see why Rudi had to burp the container. Good thing I didn’t wait any longer to make this. Is it still good? Well, I don’t think I’d call it bad. I wish Rudi were here to taste it and tell me. He’s so much better at this. Oh, for Christ’s sake. Either you’d eat it or you wouldn’t. Fine. It’s fine. Sauce. Storebought mozzarella. Noodles. Ricotta. Sauce. Farmers’ market mozzarella.

Step 3: Cook. Either set a timer or plan to make adjustments when a major event, such as Rudi’s arrival home, pulls you out of your book. Cheat on the cooking process by getting him to take the tin foil off the top.

Step 4: Warn your partner that the dinner you’re serving at 11:30 at night might be total crap. If it is, you reassure him, there’s more bread and you can just chuck the lasagna out.

Step 5: Serve with garlic toast. It tastes fine (although apparently as mozzarella ages it gets less melty), and Rudi goes back for a second piece. Score!

Step 6: Do not get sick. This is proof positive that there is nothing wrong with your methodology.

Epilogue: I wanted to fact-check for this post, so I checked the sell-by dates on the farmers’ market cheeses. The ricotta had a sell-by date of mid-November and the mozzarella was the end of October. So they were fine, really. Really.

This week’s Ten on Tuesday topic is:

Ten Favorite Games from your Childhood (in no particular order)

1. Mille Bourne — Mum is not much of a board game player, but she was always up for this French Canadian card game that combines racking up your own numbered kilometer cards with throwing auto-related hazards in the way of your opponents. Oh, and acquiring the four safety cards that grant you immunity to those roadside dangers. There’s nothing like being hit with an “arrête” card and being able to “coup-foúrre” it away. I introduced it to Eri, Rebs, and Rudi at college, but it took until meeting Shelley and Mike in 2001 before I encountered anyone else who’d grown up playing it.
2. Trivial Pursuit — I am a child of the ’80s and this is our game. Still a favorite at parties.
3. Tag — We played it at recess and we played it in the upper level of the front yard when we were old enough to be out there. There were a zillion variations, from your standard, garden-variety to freeze tag to tv tag.
4. Rummy — Eri, Rebs, and I played this for hours in college. That we kept playing it after one memorable night our freshman year when a guy we vaguely knew came over to join us and could not understand the rules, forcing us to play an entire night’s worth of Rummy 500 open-handed gives testament to how much we enjoyed it. It still gets mentioned in emails along with cocoa breaks and comforters and milano cookies and They Might Be Giants.
5. Monopoly — Perhaps better called Monotony when played the way I prefer it, I’m happiest when you don’t play with houses or hotels. Yes, it does last hours that way. No, no one really likes to play with me.
6. Scrabble — This game is beloved by Dad and Gramma and Karen and was, for a while after Rudi and I moved in together, the only board game we owned that worked for two people. We’d play, but games would end when Della decided the board looked like a good place to lie down. We stopped keeping score and instead just tried to use up all our tiles as quickly as possible. Note: Most Scrabble enthusiasts do not enjoy playing this way.
7. Outburst — This was one of the few party games we owned and we’d play it with the Wilcoxes when we got together with them. A precedent of Apples to Apples or Scattergories or Family Feud, your team was given a category and you had to guess the ten items that the game creators had believed best fit within it.
8. Yahtzee — The only purely dice-based game I really enjoy.
9. Parsec — My first and favorite computer game, played on the TI, which, for you young whipper snappers, operated by plugging into your tv set. This was a space-based game and I can remember being so proud of breaking … half a million points? … when no one was home to witness my score that I left my family a note strung across the kitchen entry, waiting to garrote the first person in the door with my news.
10. Hardball! — A two-person baseball game (later featured in The Princess Bride) played with a joystick (I think the other person had to use the keyboard?). Dad and I played quite a bit of this one on our Apple II. I believe pitch selection was what usually made the games last so long. That and my computerized ability to hit the ball was not especially better than my real-life batting average…

How about you? What games did you like to play when you were younger? [King of All Board Games, Grey Kitten, I’m looking your way…]

After a night out at the local British-style pub for dinner with friends, Rudi and I returned home to hang with the cats.

At the end of SNL, Rudi headed to bed with Jeremiah and Della, and I got to curl up on the couch with a cuppa and finish my novel with periodic visits from Corey and Posey.

Now, to bed, so I can find out why Sunday mornings were made!

The beginning of a new year calls for making some new plans and I thought I’d share three of mine with you:

1. Phone a friend.
   I feel far away from my friends these days, which means I’m not communicating with them enough. So once a month (at a bare minimum) I vow to pick up the phone and reach out.
2. Go out on the town.
   I think I’d like to go out on more dates and convention suggests that I should invite Rudi along. Seriously, we need to spend time together more consciously (as opposed to sharing space while we both sit in front of the tv). I’m thinking dinner or a movie or a show or dancing once a month. Or brunch, even. I hear couples do those kinds of things… (And, no, stopping at Pete’s for a pizza after picking up a few things at Target will not count.
3. Lose baggage.
   Rudi and I tend to hold on to too many unimportant things for too long. So each month I’m going to take a box or a bag over to Virginia and leave it at the Goodwill store there.

So that’s it. In 2011, I plan to spend more time and resources on the important relationships in my life and get rid of the stuff that’s weighing it down. Seems about right to me.

Or, at least, so we’re taught in school.

I’ve been lucky enough to be off from work since Dec. 23. I head back in the morning.

And with the arrival of a new year and a return to the office, expect, too, a return to blogging.

I have several bookish posts lined up that just need a bit of tweaking, so I expect we’ll see several of those this week and then next week will start branching out into other topics. Like knitting and the like.

Talk to you again tomorrow!