There’s something about this beautiful weather that makes you feel like eating healthy. And there’s something about food on a stick that just tastes better.

Inevitably, there were going to be kebabs.

After a few failed attempts last summer, I am proud to say this year’s grilling debut was a huge, if surprising, success. (More photos here.)

Remind me again why I endure Chicago winters? I swear, I’d be the healthiest, happiest person if the weather was beautiful all the time.

Unless it got too hot. In which case, I’d be eating ice cream four times a day and sitting in front of the air conditioner griping about how the humidity makes my hair all frizzy and my thighs rub together. It’s always something with me, isn’t it?

My sister gave Rob a waffle maker for Christmas, after hearing him gush about how he was once at a Courtyard Marriott and they made him a waffle at the complimentary breakfast buffet right before his very eyes and it was just the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him in his whole entire life.

I’ve never seen the guy so excited about an appliance, except maybe when he opened the Roomba we got for our wedding.

Rob had to go out of town on an intellectual property emergency over his birthday, but he was home for the weekend, a few days later. I decided to give him a birthday do-over on Saturday morning, so I woke up early to make him coffee, bacon, and, yes, a birthday waffle.

Sadly, trophy wives do not come programmed to use specialty kitchen appliances, so although the waffle iron itself came with several recipes for waffle batter, I thought nothing of instead using the fancy Williams-Sonoma pancake mix I had on hand (sitting in the cabinet for months while I instead went out to innumerable breakfasts).

However. Pancake mix is apparently incompatible with waffle makers. Do regular people really know these things without first encountering this disaster?

Rob woke up to the smell of bacon cooking in the microwave (where all the fat and other inherent values are absorbed into paper towels), took one look at this mess, and proclaimed:

“Good thing I had a birthday waffle at the hotel this weekend.”

Seven months ago, I was in New York City for my big show at Lincoln Center, the culmination of a year’s worth of concerts and hard work. I had a television network coming to my event the next day to film a pilot presentation for their top execs, I had just unequivocally turned down another producer that had been clamoring for our attention, and I was rushing out to meet up with a top producer from a major network, who also wanted my involvement in their upcoming reality show.

Somehow, I failed to realize that 15 minutes was not enough time to get a cab in Midtown during Friday rush hour, even if I was only going 20 blocks.

So what do I do? I get in a freaking rickshaw.

That’s right. I pulled up for my meeting with a television exec in this classy ride, powered by human sweat.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Funny part is, the producer was waiting for me outside the restaurant and saw the whole embarrassing thing. Even funnier, I suppose, is that I ended up turned him down. We had better offers.

Today, I’m grocery shopping for Thanksgiving at the Drive-By Dominick’s (so named for its proximity to the projects) when my phone rings. It’s a New York City area code, and one of my event producers had just called me five minutes earlier from his office line, which has a New York City area code. So, although I am in the habit of screening unidentified numbers, I assume it’s him, pick it up and say, “Heya! What’s up?” (which, admittedly, is not too bad compared with the innumerable other ridiculous and unprofessional things I could have said and indeed have said to this person on the phone in the past).

It is not my event producer. It is the vice president of original programming for yet another television network. She wants to talk to me, while I’m pushing my cart through the kamikaze maze that is the grocery store produce section two days before Thanksgiving, about putting my programs on the teevee.

I think this is why I have a hard time giving myself enough credit for running my own business, or for having chosen an unorthodox career: even when exciting things happen — things that might finally lend some legitimacy to what might otherwise be construed as a whole lot of screwing around, even by me — I somehow inevitably end up taking a Third World mode of transport to an important meeting, or pitching a television concept while knocking down a display of cans of evaporated milk and having to pause the conversation because I can’t hear her over the loudspeaker announcement of a price check on aisle two.

If one of these shows ever takes off and I have to spend any amount of time in Los Angeles, in a city and an industry that is all about appearances, I am going to last about 15 minutes without supervision. My saving grace will be that, from what I can gather, these Hollywood types seem to find my unique brand of unassuming idiocy to be disarming. Or at least charming, in a Midwestern sort of way.

The producer lady today asked, “Do you have a host for your show? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get someone from Glee in to host?” and I’m all immediately with the verbal diarrhea:

“Ya KNOWwwww, I was in show choir in high school with the co-creator of that show. I was Wife #52 to his King in ‘The King and I,’ ha ha ha, though I personally did less acting than I did chasing around the two two-year olds that were supposed to be my children. Last year they hired a veejay to host our finals, and she did an OK job and everything, but it was a weird choice because she was friends with Kim Kardashian and was always on that show and right before our event she got in all kinds of trouble for appearing in some sort of sex video that was all over You Tube. She wore this odd side-boob top for our show, but it really was nothing compared with what everyone there had just seen her doing on the Internet!”

… as if that is of any interest to her at all, let alone help. As if you are ever supposed to talk about your high school acting career or utter the words “side boob” in any professional context whatsoever.

I wizened up shortly thereafter and told her to please call my agent, who fortunately understands the concept of playing it cool.

He was, after all, in a college a cappella group.

If at first you don’t succeed, try …

 … try again.

If I were a different girl, I’d stitch that on a sampler. But … well, you know. There would probably be blood.

I will have you know that that pizza was made with homemade tomato sauce (diced tomatoes mixed up with olive oil, salt, pepper, and torn basil picked from the “herb garden” on our deck) and multiple types of cheese and all-natural super-fancy pepperoni. All of which were purchased on a special trip to the grocery store today.

In case you were wondering, I ate the top off with a fork. Rob is at Subway.