This is what happens to me pretty much every time I cook.

I decided to make roasted chicken, because 1) it is supposedly easy, and I might have even done it before (can’t remember), 2) it is really cold in the house and I want to turn on the oven, and 3) I have two chickens in the freezer (bought on sale!) waiting for this very purpose. I bought them planning to roast them two at a time, so that I would have leftovers for chicken soup for Thursday night’s dinner and Chinese chicken salad for lunch later in the week. How frugal and housewifey of me! I am June Fucking Cleaver!

Well. This morning I took the two chickens out of the big freezer. This afternoon I spent twenty minutes on the Internet looking for the Platonic ideal roasted chicken recipe. Then I went into the kitchen and could not find my roasting pan. Q: How do you lose a roasting pan in an 8x6 room? A: You lose it in the playroom instead.

But I was finally ready with the room-temperature butter, the spice rub (and absolutely none of the other elements the recipe called for -- including lemons, onions and kitchen twine -- but close enough). And then I realized that the chickens were still frozen so hard that I couldn’t possibly get the gizzards out.

So that was the end of that. The chickens would have to wait another day. I put them in baggies, put the baggies in the roasting pan, and started to put the whole rig in the ice box (so I will be able to find the pan tomorrow – so clever!). But the pan wouldn’t go in – too many beer bottles. Now THAT is a problem I can solve.