Bible Study or Brownies?

I think I've given up on going to my Wednesday Bible Study for now. It has just become a lot of work, and by the time I get home I'm so stressed out from the endeavor that I don't know if it's worth it. It starts at the time Harper would go down for her morning nap, so she is exhausted and ornery (probably adding to the "oh no you are NOT leaving me in the nursery" attitude). Plus, we have to brave the morning traffic which is not fun for many reasons, but the biggest one is that starting and stopping in our car are the perfect conditions for Hadley to throw up in. It's funny now that I type this that I would even consider going, but you know that it is time to talk with other adults when you start wondering things like, "Is Elmo a boy or a girl?" "Why does Diego have a lower voice on Dora the Explorer but on Go Diego Go his voice is more high pitched?"

So Wednesday we stayed home and did things around the house. Hadley is starting to write all kinds of letters and numbers as well as add more parts to her "guys" as she calls them. For several months, her guys consisted of a circle for a face, two dots for eyes, and one straight line for a mouth. Now she draws this:

This guy looks a little evil, but you might be able to see that he has hair, ears, legs, and feet. Impressive, right?

Hadley also helped me bake brownies on Wednesday. Normally, I would not bake brownies because I'm not a fan of chocolate, however, the recipe said it resembled the Girl Scout "samoas" cookies. If I had known about samoas when the girl scouts were recruiting in my days at Longfellow Elementary, I would've said, "Sign me up! Who cares if I have to camp, or learn how to sew, or whatever it is you gals do. Give me those cookies!"
Anyway, Hadley eagerly helped me measure, pour, and mix the ingredients. She told me she really wanted to help me "squeeze" the eggs, but I told her perhaps another day.

Unwrapping the butter:


Getting ready to push the buttons on the microwave:
Mixing in the flour:
As we were baking, I told Hadley about my friend down the street whose mom always seemed to have brownies and lemonade in the kitchen when we came home from school. We would sit at a little table by the window in the kitchen, eat brownies, drink lemonade, and read Archie comic books.

Isn't this turning out to be a nice anecdote?

The thing is, I love to bake. The problem is, I'm not good at math in a dangerous sort of way. It's not just the long division that I can't execute (and really, if I get the wrong answer to 23,4987 /34, how does that inconvenience anyone?). I'm not good at the you-need-to-understand-this-concept-or-you-could-hurt-yourself-or-ruin-the-brownies sort of way.

For example: the recipe said that I needed an 8 inch square pan. I didn't have that, and I didn't see why it would be a problem to pour the batter into a 13 by 9 inch rectangle pan. Also, the recipe mentioned to line the pan with parchment paper after greasing it. Well, I didn't want to do that, so I skipped that part.

Oh, I'm not done. I was supposed to melt 20 caramel candies for the topping, but I couldn't find those, so I bought an 8 oz. chocolate bar with caramel in it. I didn't see what the difference was. And I was supposed to toast coconut flakes, which I did, but I did it in the toaster oven because I was preheating our oven to bake the brownies. This last part might not seem like a big deal, except that I'm not good at math - all math - including the concept, "when an item is in a small space it doesn't take as much time to toast."

The result? The world's flattest brownies that you need some sort of gardening tool to get out of the pan, with frosting that resembles an afro because apparently chocolate doesn't melt too well in the microwave (especially when the time is set for a MUCH larger quantity), topped with coconut that you can't see because it's as dark (read: burned) as the chocolate.

I guess I should've gone to Bible Study after all.