Bread, 463. Me, 0

Or perhaps that should say Math, 972, Me, 0.

Help, I've been undone by the difficulties of halving a recipe. What the heck? I used to be an accountant, and I'm completely able to divide, say 1/2 cup into a 1/4 cup if I only want to make half a recipe.

But I've got an excuse because today I'm making bread. And bread is the bane of my existence. Everyone has one type of food they can't seem to master preparing (right?? It's not just me, right?? Why do I hear so much deafening silence?) For me, it's bread. I can never make bread right. It's too dry, or too moist, or it falls, or it never rises at all. Or I screw it up entirely all on my own, by, say, adding double the amount of flour.

Yes, this goes down as one of the better self-inflicted screwups in the annals of What A Card bread making. I was halving a recipe so as not to have far more bread than we could possibly eat. I put in half the yeast, half the water, half the milk (both heated to the appropriate 110 degrees I may add), half the sugar, half the salt, half the egg, half the shortening. Yes, somehow I managed to get through all that, appropriately halving every recipe quantity. Then I get to the flour and for some unknown reason add the entire amount. I'm stirring and stirring and stirring and it's not coming together. It's just flour with some kind of wet parts. It's not bread dough.

Then I realize what I have done. Now I have a choice: do I try to salvage this mess by doubling all the other recipe amounts? Screw that. I tossed it all. I'm going to buy my stupid bread. Mumble mumble mumble annoying mumble mumble homemade mumble mumble idiot.

Random unrelated thought: I've been tagging clothes to sell at a Mother of Twins club sale, and have been driving myself crazy. I keep forgetting what prices I'm using for things. Am I selling Carter's sleepers for $2.00 or $2.25? Gap t-shirts for $2.50 or $2.00? Children's Place shorts for $1.75 or $2.75? I'll come across a piece of clothing, know that I've already priced a similar piece of clothing, and be completely unable to price the current item without digging through all my piles to find out how much I tagged the last one for.

Like there's going to be someone checking to make sure I've priced things consistently. Like someone is going to come up to me and complain, "Why do I have to pay $1.75 for this when she found the same thing for only $1.50?" Like anyone is even going to notice amidst the gigantic piles of zillions of other people's clothing.

But I just can't do it. I keep digging through the pile, even though I realize that a 25 or 50 cent price difference between two similar items doesn't matter...