Pleasant Peasant Soup anyone?

The Mortification of Lois Lane

 

A pleasant pheasant

     So sometimes in this big goop of neurons that are busy inside my skull, information doesn't always flow in the right order.

     That's why I have the tendency to say the wrong word, because somehow the image that is in my brain is the not the sound it hears, and then when it leaves my mouth it's completely mangled and people are staring at me wondering what I just said. Thank you English language for your words that don't pronounce the way they're spelled. My brain doesn't appreciate you.

      Case in point:

        Yesterday, I was interviewing a cook for my most recent article for the paper. First of all, I was tired, but I beginning to think I'm always tired- and I was in the process of royally screwing up on completing this article.

       

        (I was interviewing and writing on the day of my deadline, yet I had known about it for weeks. If that is not last minute...I do actually have excellent reasons for not getting it done sooner but really it doesn't matter. So yesterday morning when I awoke, I laid in bed telling myself it was going to be a really sh*tty day for a variety of reasons, my last minute article one of them, and I just laid there---

Accomplishing nothing except perfecting the art of self pity. Something I have to work on because I was raised by a Mom that most of the time when faced with a problem, told me to pull up my boot straps and continue on. Actually, the advice isn't all the bad. I've learned to counter it with a little bit of sulking every once and a while, and in the meantime through all the hard stuff in my life, it's been the motto in the back of my head.)

       But back to my story: I finally grew disgusted with myself, just laying there and complaining and whining.

       “Christy,” I said to myself, but not aloud because then people think you're a little weird for talking to yourself, even though I'm sure most people do it in their heads most of the time, “You can't just call your editor and whine and tell her you're not doing the article. It needs done and failure is not an option.”

      I'm so bossy.

      I sat down, with coffee, and mulled over my angle for this story. I had nothing. Didn't know my angle. I had been trying to call someone for quotes and they were ignoring me.

        “Because I'm sure 'she's in a meeting' every time I call is code for ignore her. Especially when the receptionist says, “You're that freelance writer, right? Hold on. Oh, yeah, she's in a meeting.”

       

     Sure.

      Finally, I decided I would call the food vendors that were going to be participating in this event I was supposed to be writing about.

     Bingo.

     I call the burrito lady with the food truck. Quotes, quotes and more quotes.

    And now I was suffering from a grumbling stomach, apparently half a pomegranate was not a big enough lunch. And Buffalo Green Chili sounded good to my hunger pains.

     And then I called the catering guy who will be preparing game bird for this event.

    “Hi, so I read you're going to be making a peasant soup?”

    Silence and then a bit of laughter.

    “Umm, you mean pheasant? I'm making a pheasant soup.”

  

     Mortification.

    “I suppose you don't want to make soup out of peasants, huh?” I asked, when I could speak again.

    “No, we'll be making it out of pheasant, you know it's a bird.”

    After that I wouldn't even pronounce the word 'pheasant'- referring to it as the bird.

   “You mean the pheasant?” He would fill in the blank. I think he was mocking me.

    But I know my brain, if I mispronounce a word once, it gets stuck on that pronunciation and I will mispronounce again.

     So success. I wrote the article and submitted it.

     And then I read it this morning and realized that instead of writing about the pheasant, I wrote about the pleasant bird.

     My catering guy was cooking pleasant soup.

     Yikes!

     I was really starting to hate this bird.

    I emailed my editor and explained that although I'm sure the catering guy's soup will be pleasant, if she could correct my pleasant soup for pheasant soup I would really appreciate that.

     She emailed me back a smiley face.

     At least she didn't wish me a pheasant day.