One of my (many) quirks is that I try to leave things in the same location so that I can easily find them. My keys are always in the same place on top of the small bookshelf in my room, the remote controls are always on top of the coffee table, and the diet soda is always on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this works very well. However, there is that one time every so often where I put something in a DIFFERENT place and it completely blows my mind. I once misplaced my cell phone and spent a good half-hour searching for it before I noticed it sitting on top of the television…in the living room…its also a larger phone so I definitely should have noticed it earlier.

I decide to bake some oatmeal-raisin cookies out of the misguided notion that they are somehow not AS bad for me as store-bought (but hey, who knows, maybe they are, right? RIGHT??). After washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, I check my ingredients; flour, sugar, oatmeal, yadda, yadda, yadda. I appear to have enough of everything but a quick peek in the refrigerator reveals there is no butter! Crap. So off to the store I go for a box of butter.

Much to my disappointment, the HEB is completely OUT of unsalted butter. I am left scratching my head searching for some logical reason everyone should be baking today. I suppose everyone else who had today off in observance of Martin Luther King Day got the urge to do some baking. I’ve never used salted butter before, and for fear of tampering with my recipe, I decide to punt and use margarine. I guess its not really ‘punting’ though; Blue Bonnet did the job just as well before I started making fat cash and started using the Good Stuff.

I pick up a few other things I need and go home to fire up the oven and get to work. All goes well until I notice that burnt-cookie smell. It turns out the oven was set too high: 400 degrees instead of 350. Well, nuts. Fortunately, the cookies aren’t set-the-smoke-alarm-off burnt, the raisins on the bottom just got a little crispy. They are certainly edible, but as I do not wish to sully my reputation as a baker, those will not be leaving the apartment.

I turn down the oven and the second batch comes out perfect. I clean up the kitchen and go to the refrigerator to grab a soda. I had placed the now half-empty box of margarine on the bottom shelf and think to myself: “That should really be on the top shelf.” I move the margarine to its proper place and find a FULL box of margarine sitting on the top shelf.

Cookie, anyone?