QotD: What was your biggest cooking disaster?

That honor is tied between:

• attempting to boil an egg, still in its shell, in a bowl of water, in the microwave, and
• attempting to roast chestnuts in a toaster oven that I hadn't bothered to preheat. 

Both attempts resulted in explosions, one which was unbearably stinky and the other which ruined a toaster oven.

Here's to slow food.

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The shoulder injury has prompted a change of routine effective immediately: the laptop stays parked at its docking station at the office, at least on weeknights.  

The smart person would have decided to do this the day the Dell boxes were delivered.   The smarter person would have requested a lighter-weight notebook or a desktop to begin with.   Instead, the foolish person decides she can tough it out and add intensity to her daily hike and uses this as an excuse to spend $140 on a flash messenger backpack that is proportioned for someone taller, makes her stoop a bit to get the full advantage of the waist support, eventually realizes this is not good for her spine, reverts back to the shoulder-hugging urban commuter pack in which at least she can stand upright, and pushes on by golly until something is clearly damaged. 

The smart person would also recognize an injury for what it is, go to a doctor, get physical therapy, etc. soon after it occurs.  The foolish person relies on self-diagnosis of mere underutilized muscle soreness, stretches it vigorously for a week before realizing that is making it worse, and persists in dancing “through” it anyway, takes on new yoga classes, continues to strap on heavy backpack, etc. for weeks and weeks.  Then, one day, she can’t raise her right arm.

In case you are in any doubt as to who the foolish person is, let me tell you that once I stuck my finger in the beater-bar of a vacuum cleaner (in the “on” mode) that I thought I wasn’t working.  It was.  In addition to the pain of the shredding of the fingernail, there was the added humiliation of the witnessing of the seven-year-old I was babysitting at the time.  She knew better than to do that.  (She probably learned quite a few useful life lessons by observing two years of babysitter foibles.)

Anyways … I will leave the computer at work tonight and I will see a doctor at a sports medicine clinic next Thursday and I hereby cease the self-flagellation right this minute. 

Now I just have to get used to having no more monkey (i.e., Internet) on weeknights.  This will no doubt do wonderful things for my reading, art-making, housekeeping, and living.  I might even start riding my bike to work again.  Hurrah!  I feel better and lighter and freer and more productive already.  And a bit wiser.

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