The perils of pistachio pudding

Tomorrow, we will be driving over two hours to Joey's cousin/business partner's house for the Big Grub with the rest of Joey's family (or at least his mom's side). In my dilemma yesterday, Gretchen suggested making her Watergate salad - and I thought hey, this will be easy.

Somewhere in the midst of today, I ended up stuck at the reception desk covering the phones for two hours since our receptionist got a bad case of Thanksgivingitis and called in sick today. There was this Better Homes & Gardens magazine with this fabulous recipe for a chocolate layer cake with pumpkin filling covered in a chocolate glaze. So I thought hey, this will be easy too. I will be the hero and bring this fabulous salad and cake! Everyone will ooh and ah in amazement that not only have I created these culinary masterpieces, but we are dressed to the hilt, well-rested and 10 pounds skinnier than last time they saw us. (I'm totally making up the 10 pounds thing because it would just be fabulous to actually be true....)

This afternoon the powers that be let us out of work at 2:30 so I proceeded to the bar up the street to have a few drinks...went and got my nails done...went to Sephora and blew a bunch of money...picked up Monkey Man...fed said primate dinner...took him to tae kwan do...met with the teacher and signed him up for REAL lessons (yikes)...and then ran to the grocery store to get the stuff.

First problem - no pistachio pudding mix. Nowhere, no how. Not even store brand. Call the other grocery store in my area (speed dial #3 on my phone) and have them check - and they are out too. No problem, I thought...I'll just make the cake. I have all the ingredients for that and I can whip it up tonight.

Get home, get ready to grease and flour the cake pans...no cake pans. Where the fuck are my cake pans? I don't remember seeing them since we moved a year and a half ago. Crap.

So what am I bringing? Well, I bought this strawberry cheese ball mix a while back that I'll make and serve with little cocoa cookies. And maybe some of this parmesan/red pepper cheese dip that I'll have to figure out what to pair it with. Both will take a total of 15 minutes to fix. Probably no one will eat it. And I am going to mourn not having Gretchen's yummy salad because I've been fantasizing about it all day.

*Sigh* I just should've bought a damn frozen pie and some Cool Whip and been done with it.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!