I’m growing increasingly concerned about the milestone adult skills I haven’t had the occasion to learn.

Several kids I went to high school with now own homes slash children. I recently decided that storing extra shoes inside my oven was crossing the line – and so I ordered another set of rack raisers to increase storage under my bed. For the record they’re very hard to find outside the “back to college” season.

Yes I’m doing it, living it, immersed in it – but eventually I’m going to be responsible for cooking Easter dinner and unless Kashi is developing a three course frozen dinner for 12 offering (Pierson?), I’m going to be up shit creek without a matching set of china.

After some evaluation I’ve decided I’m totally screwed in the following life skills categories:

• Cooking of the non-Mexican, pasta, or stir-fry-based variety.

If it can be cooked on the stove-top I’ve got it covered. If it requires more than two steps and familiarity with the inside of the oven, that’s trouble.
I know people in Manhattan who don’t technically have an oven so they have to cook everything on hot plates and Forman grills. I envy them because they have an excuse.

I am considering making a bid to plan and cook all of Easter dinner as a band-aid style approach to serving-a-full-meal skills, but I’m not sure the rising of Christ is a holiday I should ruin considering my already challenged relationship with the gates of heaven.

All of this said, I have consistently creative ideas about many food dishes i.e. mac n’ cheese inside a wrap….think about it…

• Driving, co-piloting, pumping gas, knowing when a car is about to blow up.

In can see how the idea of driving a convertible up the coast of some scenic route, Pat Benatar-blaring, hair blowing manageably under some great looking kerchief could be appealing to many people. I admire fearlessly confidant drivers with an innate sense of direction and ability to pump gas without reading the instructions. I myself fall into the agreeable passenger with expert driving soundtrack compilation skills and an impressively calm demeener when lost despite not actual ability to get un-lost.

• Caring for plants and or animals
  

I don’t doubt that there’s a significant difference between these two tasks, but at this point in my life they can safely remain grouped together.
Last Friday afternoon I bought tulips from the bodega on my corner because it was sunny and I had ten dollars in my pocket. Had I saved that ten dollars I would simply have spent it on a cocktail so wasting it on flowers was actually saving me trouble.

I took the flowers home and prepared them for the various-sized empty juice bottles I have saved for when someone surprises me with flowers (still waiting…). Apparently there is a very wrong way to cut the stems of flowers because when I woke up on Saturday morning every single one of my tulips was slumped over in its jar as if it was perhaps just still sleeping. I tried to wake one up but found it was actually just dead.

Imagine this same scenario applied to a pet — of any form.

• Requesting, evaluating, preparing, and signing documents relating to money.

Numbers are essentially the opposite of “my thing” — my thing being words and sometimes colors. Numbers as applied to purchasing of property, saving of money, and assessment of things like a 401K or Roth IRA? or CD? (these are things I hear people talk about) are my god-damned Goliath.

I have no intention of marrying for money, but I have every intention of marrying for math skills and a working knowledge of the economy.

That said, as a baby step toward financial prowess I am, this year, attempting to do my own Turbo Tax without the aid of an accountant friend. Gallotta, please remain on deck.
Conclusions:

Once on a Habitat for Humanity trip to Baltimore I learned how to hang a door (this mean put it on the frame and make it open and close) in 15 minutes, so I’m sure none of these real-world skills are that far beyond me. Plus when my time comes I’ll have quite a few unique offerings to contribute to the people of my eventual culdesac:

• Ability to shop for and purchase an outfit for any occassion in under twenty minutes with less than $50 dollars.
• Ease with the carrying of many, many bags of groceries up several, several flights of stairs
• Strong Internet stalking skills
• Gay-dar