Maybe it's the same everywhere, maybe not.

We are down to a total of 9 forks at work, and only 2 of them work right. Why did all the forks disappear? In previous years we couldn't keep spoons. Why?

By the way, those zigzag forks are cute but even more worthless than sporks.

How could you, Pepperidge Farm?

I bought a big bag of this stuff because it's my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I go to my sister's house for the holiday, but I make my own stuffing at home too. Ok, my secret's out. When eating the big feast at my sister's house, my "rules" are suspended. But at home, well, I wish I had never looked at the ingredients. There it is, before the 2% or less note, high fructose corn syrup.

Ok, how hard is it to make stale bread cubes? With bread that isn't contaminated? Not so difficult, but this is the stuffing mix of decades of tradition. I wish I had never looked. Now these bags are going to the food drive at work and I'll be buying loaves of bread in the store bakery to harden up.

Yesterday I read the most complex stuffing recipe yet. It involved 3 skillets, 3 baking sheets, and if you don't have a big cast iron skillet, another casserole dish. If it didn't look so good I wouldn't even consider it. But the mushrooms are already bought, know what I mean?

Sunday and the weather's chilly.

It was so nice that I had to make some pumpkin muffins. Yes, they were as tasty as I had remembered them from, oh, about 3 years ago. That picture, above, is an experiment with my new phone's camera. I still had to Photoshop it a little bit, though.

The trouble with seeing so many great baking recipes online is that I don't repeat that often. That means I have a plethora of specialty pans, tools and small appliances. I have started keeping some of them in the garage. One of the many perks of being divorced is that my garage is available for overflow kitchen stuff.

We thought ants were a problem.

My coworker stresses about ants in the library, but little did she know it was about to take a turn for the worse. Much worse.

This building is maintained by the City of Boynton Beach, and like most cities, it has cut its expenses even closer to the bone. Our landscaping mulch is responsible for the infestation of worms, which march up the outsides of the building by the dozens each day. But whatever they are spraying on the plants is causing them to come out of the mulch by the hundreds to escape the poison. If they'd stay outside no one would notice, but they have found a way inside. We had been finding them inside the building, dead and alive on the floor, upstairs and down.

The latest antic of the crawlers was the one that dropped out of the air vent onto the clerk's desk, right next to her keyboard. Talk about drama! We don't want to be complainers, really, but can't something be done about the worms? Except no lizards please, because staff doesn't like them either. (I can relate.)

My poor car.

I wiped down all the plastic and leather inside with Armor All and it looks fantastic, for an 8 year old car, that is.

So why is it a poor car? It has been 4 years since it was cleaned up like this and my sister was the one who did it. And she did it because she didn't want to make the 12 hour drive in it in the condition it was in.

I guess I take after my dad when it comes to interior car maintenance. Well, not quite that bad, because my back seat is only full of reusable grocery bags, old raincoats and umbrellas, a special back brace for long trips, paper towels, notepads, and the two screens for the windshield that have angry eyes printed on them. Daddy's back and front seat was full of all kinds of stuff, quite a lot of which was trash, pure and simple. It was like doing an archeological dig looking through that stuff.

Now, if it would just cool down a bit I can go back and clean the glass.

Just how long has that tomato been on the counter?

Two factions of my personality are at odds: the part of me that knows fresh vegetables and fruits are the secret to health and well-being, and the part of me that automatically reaches for the stuff that's easier to prepare. This time the lazy side won, obviously.

You know the tomato is really overripe if the sprouted seed pops out of the side. The thing is, they usually ooze a little bit to announce their condition. I can only imagine what the inside of this bad boy looks like. I'm imagining because I really don't want to look. Really. Not. Going. To. Look. Inside it.

This also points up that in spite of renewed vows that I will actually eat the produce I buy, some of it will look me in the face daily and go bad. And I don't even buy that much of it anymore because of the waste factor. I have got to come up with a better system.

Is it bad to want new screens in hurricane season?

My patio is in pretty bad shape with rusty screws, ripped screens and assorted dirt and mildew threats. The last straw was the screen door latch that broke off a couple of days ago.

I had a guy come out and estimate how much to fix everything and it seems reasonable enough to me, but even he said wait until hurricane season is over. If I do that I'll have to do something about that door latch ASAP because the door is slapping open shut open shut open shut.

But I'll be very happy to have my patio pretty again. Then I'll have to buy a new table/chair set. Go team!