updating the resume

(I've always been consumed by my sweet tooth...sometimes literally)

Tuesday's attempt at stress baking was, well, stressful.  I wandered in and out of more stores than I should have admitted, and still came home to a tragic butter shortage (but arrived with plenty of bread and cheetos).  I still tried to make cookies happen (I'm a bit of a one-note baker), and while it wasn't total disaster, they certainly weren't up to par to ship halfway across the world (apologies to the DC coworkers who politely ate them regardless).

I had every intention of making a more coherent grocery trip yesterday so that I could work out a little more stress on a second batch.  Instead I met a friend I hadn't seen in ages for some long-overdue catching up.  She suggested her favorite bar in DC, and mentioned the prospects of a pitcher of mojitos. I was a little hesitant, given my obscenely low tolerance and fear of repeating that night I ate wine for dinner.  But when there's no pork in the crock pot, and you feel like your work life is fraying at the seams, it's pretty easy to let a friend to talk you in to seeing if the solution can be found amongst a mass of mint, lime, and rum.  {So far, no dice, but they were, as she promised, the most amazing mojitos ever}

I made a midday trip to the Safeway near my office and once again walked out with an embarrassing quantity of snacks (have I mentioned I cannot turn down a grocery store sale?), but also managed to remember the butter and the mini chocolate chips for the second go at cookies.

When I got home from work and threw the dough together, I went to add the mini chocolate chips. As I poured the first few in to the dough, something looked off.  Probably because these were just plain old boring normal sized chocolate chips.  Poisonous? Hardly.  Not what I meant to buy at all? Absolutely.  

I'm beginning to think I need to remove "detail-oriented" from my resume after all these grocery store debacles (among other forgetful moments).  It is obviously a bold-faced lie.  

Kind of like the time I got totally called out for claiming on my resume that I spoke intermediate Italian. 

So here's the thing.  Once upon a time, circa fall 2008, I spoke decent Italian.  I'm a language person.  A grammarian specifically.  Try not to be too jealous of all that coolness.  

I kept it on my resume, because I was in slight denial about how much my skills had slipped since I came home from Italy (and I'm one lazy bum).  

And then one day, a former coworker passed said resume along to a contact of his who was recruiting for overseas jobs (not in Italy, mind you.  no, in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc).  I half forgot about it, and moved on to hiding from my former boss (who was possibly one of the more formative but frightening people I have ever encountered).  

Until my desk phone rang, and I unwisely did not screen the call.  Initially I thought it was a wrong number.  I could not understand a single word the guy was saying.  As I was trying to politely hang up on this mystery caller, I began to really listen to what he was saying.  

He was speaking Italian.  Oh.  Oh dear.  

Now, to be fair to my supposed skills, I could actually understand every word he was saying.  But by this point, I was so flustered (and embarrassed about what my nearby coworkers must be thinking) that I only answered him in English.  I'm sure this was really impressive to him.  

After I yelled at the former coworker for not warning me, I sat down to compose an email in Italian to the recruiter, claiming that the element of surprise negated my ability to speak articulately (in any language).  

And then I updated my resume.