I was already sweating. I swiped the back of my hand across my brow and then took a sip of Bud Light in the hopes it would cool me down.

It did not.

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll know that I bought myself an awesome indoor grill in celebration of my promotion. This is actually very unlike me. My usual idea of a reward, is to allow myself to take a weekend nap with The Cat.

But this time I felt I deserved more.

So off to Amazon.com I went, in the hopes that the purchase would propel me towards a Summer of healthy eating and as a result, an overall healthy lifestyle. FOREVER. That Sunday afternoon, I decided to make a quick and easy meal of chicken and vegetables. Something I could have for dinner and then bring the leftovers to work.

It took me an hour and a half to make that meal.

I…ran into some problems.

I had wanted to add some bacon flair to the chicken so had decided to unlatch the grill to lay flat, which gave me two sides to cook on. As the bacon simmered nicely, I poured some olive oil on the other plate to grill the vegetables – onion, zucchini and cauliflower.

I didn’t notice right away but as I smoothed the oil over the plate, the plastic basting brush I was using completely disintegrated from the heat. This upset me because my cousin’s two daughters had given me the brush for Christmas. I thought about just ignoring the whole thing and continuing to cook but decided against it. I didn’t want my end of days to be remembered as I’d ingested microscopic bits of toxic melted plastic, just because I’d been too lazy to wash some grill plates.

So I finished the bacon and then had to turn everything off and let it cool. And then I cleaned the stupid things.

Since I was behind in my predetermined timeline, I decided to grill the chicken breasts and vegetables together, with the closed grill option. This is what the griller’s instructions suggested and it seemed so simple.

But it was not so simple. As every time I shut the grill, a piece of cauliflower would be shoved off the plate from the weight of the lid and fly out onto the floor, or into The Cat’s water bowl, or under the stove, or pretty much anywhere. I’m not lying when I say two days later, I found a piece of cauliflower behind the toilet.

What is it about cauliflower? Why is it so unruly?

All of this left me frustrated. And sweating.

I know that if I don’t get the majority of the week’s post completed by Sunday evening, I’ll feel super stressed out the rest of the week, trying to catch up. By the time this whole grilling situation was managed, it was already 8:30pm, which according to my usual Sunday agenda is, “Relax & Unwind Time.”

I don’t like to have to write during “Relax & Unwind Time.”

So I decided to forgo this week’s post.

But to be honest, we’re not missing anything. I had originally hoped to write about Thalia and Sean’s reworking of my Online Dating Profile but, although we had brunch at Sean’s as planned, we didn’t really get to the profile. There was a lot of other stuff to discuss, such as – Thalia and my earlier in the day trip to the beach (my first time since I’ve been in NYC), the NotQuiteACougar.com One Year Anniversary Party and Sean’s brunch spread, which included his amazing chicken and also a new recipe – Spiced Beef Sliders, which I could tell were going to be so good, I found myself being very rude and taking two on the first round before anyone else had gotten their first. I knew it was going to be one of those Food Memories – where you look back and sigh because the meal was so good and you’ll want to replicate it, but you know you’ll never be able to. Even if you got the recipe just right. Because it wasn’t only about the food, but the company and occasion as well.

So no real post for this week. Let’s hope there’s more to report next week.

Image