Blame It On Squidoo

So I slid my last sheet of Snickerdoodles into the 375° oven and glanced at my watch. Ten to twelve minutes and I was free to run those errands I'd put off all week. I needed to go to the post office, grocery store, and library. And if I had time, I'd grab a latte on the way home.

Well, somewhere between the moment I closed that oven door and the moment I slid into my car, my brain scheduled a holiday.

Two and a half hours later, I was loading groceries into my car when a thought niggled at my mind. Did I take that last batch of cookies out of the oven? The more I thought about it, the less I could remember. I slammed the trunk and headed home like a crazed woman. Forget the latte; I had something hotter on my mind.
Would the fire engines still be there when I arrived? Was there an insurance code to cover flaming Snickerdoodles?

My heart leapt into my throat as I approached the turnoff into my neighborhood. A tall, dark plume of smoke hovered over the rooftops...or was that just another storm cloud? Had my cookie disaster torched the kitchen? I was braced to find my house a pile of smoldering rubble.

pparently the firefighters had left already.
The neighborhood was eerily quiet. Not a cat or person in sight. Probably down at the newspaper office giving their eyewitness account.

I so appreciated that the firefighters had taken care to not trample my lawn. I could see that they didn't have to hack a hole in the roof, either. Must have put the fire out quickly. I dreaded surveying the water damage, but couldn't help but turn my mental lemons into sweet, refreshing lemonade: Hmmm...maybe I'll get that dream kitchen after all!

I instinctively pulled my t-shirt up over my nose and mouth. Smoke inhalation is no laughing matter. As I pushed the door open, I sent up a quick prayer and prepared for the worst.

The house smelled...well, normal, like fresh baked cookies! My kitchen wasn't swimming in water, either, but there was one little problem.

My cookies...

My cookies...

My cookies...

My cookies were STILL in the oven, BAKING!

My carbon footprint was downright criminal that day. My oven had been at a blazing 375° for 2 1/2 hours. I pressed the Off button and reached inside with an oven mitt.

I've never seen cookies quite like it. They were a cross between aluminum foil and metal fencepost caps. Round and shiny with a glossy surface. I set the cookie sheet on a cooling rack, and returned a few minutes later to move them onto a paper towel. My curiosity had gotten the best of me. I had to see what a 2 1/2-hour Snickerdoodle tasted like.

It was rock-hard. Tasted like something that had been baked 150 minutes. That's about 15X the suggested baking time on the recipe.

I offered the cookie to my dog, who licked it, then turned up her nose and walked away. This is a dog who would eat cabbage and broccoli, but knew a petrified Snickerdoodle when she saw one.

Ah, yes...Life before Squidoo was very complicated.

o doubt about it, Squidoo transforms a normal person into a creative machine. Some have gone so far as to call it addictive. I'd rather call it captivating, as in:

Squidoo is so funny the way it captivates my attention and adds a hazardous element to driving,

or: Squidoo has a way of captivating my brain and glazing my eyes in the middle of a serious conversation.

No doubt about it, a lensmaster is on call at any moment because fact is, you never know when the Best Lens Idea of the Decade could strike. It could strike me this very moment and I'd have to leave this Blame It On Squidoo lens and go chasing after the real lens. It's not easy living the life of a Squidooer.

Multi-tasking is a must, unless, of course, you plan to do nothing but Squidoo all day. Then it takes planting BIC and shutting the world out. But alas... some days you just gotta eat.

One morning found me at a critical point in a most serious lens, when hunger pangs snuck up on me. So I set a small skillet on the stove, thinking I would make myself breakfast. French toast sounded good. Into the skillet went two plump pieces of french bread dipped in a mixture of egg, cinnamon, vanilla, and miIk. I set the timer (yes, folks, I now have a timer) to three minutes and dashed back to my computer to complete a module.

I didn't hear the timer, but I did hear the smoke alarm.Do you see a pattern here? My life gravitates from one smoky emergency to another.
Smoke was hugging the ceilings as I skidded into the kitchen, grabbed that blackened skillet and set it oh-so-carefully on a cold back burner. Then I grabbed a dish towel and raced back to the shrieking smoke alarm, waving the towel frantically back and forth to shut the thing off.

I was forced to open a few windows in spite of our 34° morn and gave thanks for yet another near miss. God must be extremely puzzled by my strange behavior.

It wasn't my fault, though. Squidoo is just so darned captivating.

But all was not lost!. That near-mishap produced a good idea for a new lens. I made a mental note of it, and that afternoon Fan the Flame: Help Spread the Squidoo Fire! was born.

See? Squidoo has taught me to turn even a burnt breakfast into a lens. I hope it makes Seth proud.