Oct. 8: Mac & Cheese Ho

Some people are nice. I like them.

Take my neighbor, Dawn (please! ha ha ha! no really, don't touch her, she's mine). I was bragging on her macaroni and cheese recently. It's the homemade kind, not the orange (albeit a different sort of deeeeelicious) stuff. It's the kind with three pounds of butter and eight pounds of cheese and a handful of noodles. The really, really, really good kind.

Dawn didn't remember that I'd tried it before, or that I'd taken fourths. Geez, if I wasn't so worried someone would have thought I was a pig, I'd have taken the whole pan into the corner and growled if anyone came near me. Yes, it was that good.

Anyway, Dawn e-mailed me last week to say she was making a batch and was going to bring some to me the next day. I could barely sleep that night! And sure enough, Saturday there was a casserole dish on the table next to my front door. Although I had just stuffed myself on Darlene's mushroom lasagna for lunch, I couldn't help sneaking a little bite of Dawn's gourmet wonder. Even uncooked, it was scrump-diddly-umptious. How does she do it? The woman is a goddess!

A few hours later I baked the whole pan. Victor took one bite and said, "We are soooo not wasting this on Katie and Jack." They ate orange stuff.

I am one lucky girl. But if I didn't know better, I'd wonder why Dawn was being so nice. I would wonder if she was planning to deliver the mac & cheese and then bonk me on the head with it and steal my car. But she really is just generous and lovely. And she's super-duper nice when she's been drinking. In fact, she scared the living crap out of me when she tried to kiss me once, just before she passed out in her front yard. I didn't really know her then. I know her better now, and she still tries to kiss me sometimes but I'm pretty sure she's not going to steal anyone's car.

I stopped being afraid of Dawn a long time ago, but after her kind gesture, she better be prepared for me to lay a big smooch on her the next time we've had too many flaming Sambuca shots. How sad is it that I'll do just about anything for mac & cheese? Yikes.