Blacklisted from the PTA by Lela Davidson Read Free Book Online

and doused it. Bad idea. I missed the spider completely, but startled it into racing toward me again. I hopped back inside and slammed the door, then slid down the door until I was sitting on the floor. I pulled my hair searching for a solution. You can do this thing, I told myself.
    I got a broom, figuring I’d trick the spider by approaching from the other direction. Creeping through the garage and around the house, I wondered why broom handles weren’t longer. Closer and closer, I gained confidence. Yes, this was going to work. Closer, just a little closer…
Thwack! Thwack, thwack again. Smush, crush. “Die, you little freak!”
    The spider didn’t move. That’s one good thing about spiders. They wither up and die, not like some pests that play dead, only to skuttle away before you return with a tissue. For good measure, I swept the incapacitated monster into the flowerbed and covered it with dirt. Then I filled the formula tin again and flooded the spot, making a little puddle in the red clay. Bludgeoned, buried, and drowned. Dead for certain.
I dug it up later to show my husband. “It was a lot bigger before I killed it,” I told him. He sort of believed me.
    You’d think after going medieval on a tarantula so many years ago I’d be over my fear of spiders. I’m not. So when you see my back yard looking neglected, you can blame that yellow and black striped garden-variety fiend. What’s my excuse for the front beds? That’s where we found the black widow.

Top 10 Things That Could Go Wrong While Baking – A Cautionary Tale
    M AKE COMMENTS IN MY COOKBOOKS WHEN I TRY RECIPES —things like “Excellent,” “Needs more salt,” and “Kids loved it.” What I wrote after a recent traumatic cake baking experience is not suitable for publication. If my cookbooks survive me, it will be a testament to my descendants of their grandmother’s battle with baked goods, and her potty mouth.
    I don’t know why I torture myself with baking from scratch.
    I ought to stick with recipes printed on the back of a box with a red spoon in the corner. If you dislike baking—as I do—the baking knows it, and it messes with you.
    Still, me with my optimism, and the deceptively simply recipe with its butter and eggs…
    It was a pound cake. What could possibly go wrong?
    For the record:
    1.  You could be out of flour. Turns out, this is a baking deal breaker. Who knew?
    2.  You could decide to get some bang for your bake by doubling the recipe. However, now that you have flour, all those ingredients don’t neatly fit into your fancy mixer—the one that still matches your kitchen even though you haven’t it used since the last time you were delusional enough to bake something, which was a couple of Christmases ago.
3.  You could neglect to ask—before getting started—what exactly is a tube pan?
    4.  You could assume said tube pan is pretty similar to a loaf pan because the name of the recipe has “pound cake” in it, and you’ve seen pound cakes—plenty of them. They are rectangular, like a loaf pan.
    5.  You could skim over the part of the recipe that says sift and whip egg whites until they’re stiff—whatever that means—and therefore underestimate the time effort, and skill involved in what you thought was going to be your basic dump-stir-pour operation.
    6.  You could decide that instead of the handy mixer to whip the egg whites, you’ll do it by hand, which could result in a nasty cramp in your right bicep.
    7.  You could ignore the visual evidence that the cake batter does not fit into the aforementioned loaf pan. In fact, you could fill it all the way up so that it’s almost spilling out before it even goes into the oven. Then you could be so grateful that the whole drama is in the oven that you don’t even mind cleaning up the unholy mess in your kitchen. You might even smile as you’re wiping down the last puff of flour.
8.  You could smell something familiar: smoke.
    9.  You could then spend