Friday I decided ENOUGH was ENOUGH. I was going to have a grill and that was all there was to it. I drove to, no lie, four drugstores before finding a $14.99 number whose box did not look like it had been thrown down a flight of stairs.

So I buy this little charcoal grill and lighter fluid and charcoal and a brush and a scrubby thing, and think, man, this will be so easy and fun!

Y'all, grills need assembly. I knew my husband, not being on the grill-wagon, would not want to come home to learn he had a project like that to do, so I assembled it myself (quite impressively). Then I waited, and showed him what I'd made. He was underwhelmed.

Then we had to build the fire. I naively assumed that now that I have a husband, he came equipped with the knowledge of what to do with this. He did not. I decided to toss on some charcoal, douse with lighter fluid, and light. 8 trillion matches later, I realized that I should maybe have consulted some experts first. (In the future, I am going to follow the advice of Alton Brown and my father- paper towels doused in Crisco in the ash holder underneath the charcoal. My dad actually told me how to make a chimney starter from a coffee can, but I am no Boy Scout.)

Anyway. Despite the massive amount of lighter fluid fumes giving my husband a terrible headache and flashbacks to barbeque traumas of his youth, the steak was incredible. (I rubbed it with a cocoa cumin spice rub from a recent Cook's Illustrated.) I will grill on.