If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you’re
familiar with my occasional ”deadline disasters,” i.e., the various household
calamities that seem to befall me whenever I’m deep in the throes of a book
deadline and in such a writing fog that I do stupid things with calamitous
results. For example, one time I somehow accidentally
washed an entire box of trash bags along with a load of laundry. What a pain!
Anyway, now that I’ve made it through yet another deadline,
it’s time to add not just one but two more such incidents to the pantheon. Both of the following happened just two weeks
ago as the clock was ticking down and my brain was somewhere off in a fictional
world rather than paying attention to the physical one.
The Soup Curse
Note to self: The next time you’re on a deadline, don’t make
soup! That’s the lesson I’ve learned as once again I had an incident that ended
in despair. The last time, I accidentally
left the fridge door open all night—and ended up spoiling everything inside
including a huge batch of soup I’d just
made.
This time, I also destroyed an entire batch of freshly-made
soup, albeit in a different way. Here’s how it went…
As you can see from the above photo, I decided to cook up
some homemade “bone broth”, which is done by combining a big beef bone with
chopped veggies, water, and various herbs and spices then simmering the whole
thing for about 48 hours. It was a lot
of work, especially considering I had to go to a special butcher to get the
bone, but I knew it would pay off in the end. Ah, the best laid plans…
After the first 24 hours, it was time to add some more
spices to the mix, but as I reached into the cabinet, my head was off in the
clouds so I wasn’t really paying attention, and I accidentally knocked over a
big jar of bouillon cubes. As if in slow motion, the jar tumbled from the
cabinet and struck the edge of my favorite glass serving bowl, shattering part
of it to pieces, the largest of which then shot sideways and struck the edge of
the crock pot, causing a big chip in its rim and a crack that ran all the way
down the side.
It happened so quickly and within such a small space that
there was no way to know whether any of the broken glass from the bowl or shards
from the chip had ended up in the soup or not. So after a brief period of
denial followed by a pity party, I scrapped the entire thing. Final score?
Mindy-0, trash can-1, including the soup, the broken serving dish, and the
crock pot itself.
Insult to Injury
Later, I was washing the items I’d used in my broth-making
venture—cutting board, utensils, etc.—and was once again lost in thought when a
second calamity occurred…
I think this one was just a case of a worn out hose finally
losing its grip rather than a result of anything I did. However, thanks to my
absentminded state, it took a good 15 or 20 seconds before I even comprehended
what was happening. In the photo, I’ve got the water barely turned on, just for
demonstration purposes. But during that 15-20 second gap, the water was running
hard enough to shoot straight up into the air in a giant arc, landing on the
kitchen bar behind me—about a foot away from my open laptop! Talk about
panic!!!
When I finally grasped the situation, I turned off the
water, grabbed my laptop, and flipped it upside down. Then I toweled it dry and left it upside down
for the rest of the day. (Fortunately, I had a printed copy of the manuscript,
so I was able to keep working even without the computer.) The next morning,
prayers said and fingers crossed, I turned the machine right side up and tried
it out. Praise the Lord, there were no residual problems. Big exhale, but boy,
that was a close one!
Not Again
Whenever I have one of these incidents, I tell myself it
won’t happen again, but inevitably it does. Maybe the next time I’m on a
deadline, when things get really bad, I should considering hiring a babysitter—for
myself. J
For now, I’m just going to put these incidents out of my
mind, sit back, and enjoy the fact that
I managed to get the manuscript done and in on time regardless. My mind is
already gearing up for my next project, but hopefully I won’t have any
disasters like this again—or at least not until the next deadline rolls
around!
No comments:
Post a Comment