Abigail M. Schilling

I was "in a funk today," according to my co-worker.

I always imagined funks being the driving forces behind teachers giving me lower grades (clearly they were in a funk), servers bringing the wrong food (barring certain instances of repeated behavior), ovens burning things. I thought a funk was a mood that exploded onto everything else and ruined it.

And by golly me, I am not a ruiner. I might be a whiner. I might be a complainer. But I am not a ruiner. I won't let my less-than-sunny day influence the grades I give you or the food I serve. So as other co-workers visited our office, they'd look at me and then turn to my co-worker and say, "what's the matter with her?" My eye makeup was smeared all over my face (eye rubbing is what I do when I whine), my shoulders were drooped, and my desk heater was on high.

"She's in a funk today," he'd say.

That just made me rub my eyes more; I was not ruining anything! The non-ruining funk got worse and worse the more I went without lunch. I was very busy at work trying my best to eliminate funk-causing situations and was reluctant to leave the office. I felt that if I left the situations would multiply and I'd never find air again. So I stayed in my office eating triscuits.

By the end of the day, I was starving from the inside out and made a plan to stop at the ghetto Albertson's on the way home and get food for dinner.

I bought the store.

There were a couple baked chicken recipes I had read about online and rather than pick one and write down the ingredients I tried to just remember off the top of my head while I was trolling through the store. So I bought the store. Everything from chili powder to maraschino cherries to buttermilk. Bread, salad, shake'nbake, cake. Pudding, cheese, cheese, cheese. Some hard cider. More bread. Orange juice. I was out of control.

The good news? I totally made dinner. Which I forgot was one of my goals for this week until I was half way through home made french fries (!) and chicken strips (!). I even took pictures of the whole process but the camera ran out of batteries half way through dessert. I'll have to get a picture up tomorrow.

Let's just say I made Bach a strawberry and chocolate birthday cake. He's very old; he deserves it.

When Jon and Carolyn came home I taught Jon the lyrics to Trouble in River City, Carolyn taught me how to play Yankee Doodle Dandy on the recorder, and we all gathered 'round the piano and celebrated Bach.

Psh, funk.