The Point at Which Smart Becomes So Smart That it Turns Stupid

I am making myself fishsticks. This in itself does not make sense, but what follows makes even less sense. I am making myself fishsticks, and I was trying a few minutes ago to decide what I would put on them. I usually put malt vinegar on fish, or rather, I *drown* the helpless ex-fishes in malt vinegar. I then recalled that Seth usually dips his in ketchup. While this may sound unrefined and disgusting (actually, while it *is* unrefined and disgusting), I remembered having tried it at one point, and found it to be quite good. Then I remembered cocktail sauce. Wonderful, beautiful, love-r-ly cocktail sauce. I love putting cocktail sauce on fried shrimp, and the fishsticks were coated with the same kind of crumbly breading, so I figured they would be *perfect* with cocktail sauce. I realized then that cocktail sauce was basically just ketchup with vinegar and probably some onion in it, and I could simply mix a little malt vinegar *into* the ketchup to make my *own* cocktail-esque sauce. In Gifted Kid Camp, one of the favorite "story sessions" that inevitably took place each year was "the time I made my own ___ without a recipe." This fond memory reminded me of one guy who said he once looked at the back of a jar or alfredo sauce in the grocery store to find the ingredients in order of proportion, then went home to make his own. In the spirit of this, and because I still didn't know what those white lumps in cocktail sauce were, I decided that I'd check to see if we had any so I could figure out how to make it. I began by searching the pantry when it hit me. I wanted cocktail sauce. I decided to make cocktail sauce. I decided to look for cocktail sauce so I would know how to make it. Hey, too-innovative-for-her-own-good girl, why not just EAT THE FREAKIN' COCKTAIL SAUCE in the bottle if we have any? We do. It was in the back of the fridge. I feel very ashamed of myself.