high-bar baking

In conjunction with cookies I made for a social event (Halloween cookie decorating!) — a note about “productive complaining.”

It’s not in air quotes because it’s fake. They’re there because I believe I coined the term (I don’t need to hear about it, should I be wrong). 

The epitome of productive complaining is Sherlock and Watson both engaging Stamford on the same day about there not being a single reasonable person in London to room with. Voila, look who he sets up. The rest, as they say, is history. 

The roommate example is a classic one; in situations where you need a pair, often the best way to find a pair is to spread around your social network that you’re looking for a fit. Would that this were so straightforward with boyfriends, but I digress. 

But it pops up all the time. I ended up fixing an overflowing database at my job once because I was complaining to the original architect about how I couldn’t figure out why my purges weren’t working. “Oh, let me dig up that email thread for you — we used to have the DBAs re-org it every quarter, you should bring that back.” Problem solved. 

I, of course, wish more people complained to me about the niche things I have fixes for. Bombas has a great no-show sock. I have tried all the brownie recipes and I know which one is best for your use case. I threw my back out in January and I have a regimen for getting backs back into shape. 

Putting my own self-aggrandizing aside, of course, people want to help you. Even when your problem feels hopeless, or wrong for the audience (why would my younger sister have an idea about how to help with my forehead wrinkles?), sometimes it isn’t. 

So keep complaining, I suppose. Just because you don’t have an answer, doesn’t mean somebody else won’t. 

Except about finding a boyfriend. Nobody has any idea on that front.