Does life ever seem to have too many tricks up its sleeve? I am talking about those little odd events that happen once in a lifetime and seem out of place and so poorly or should I say perfectly timed as to be virtually impossible. I seem to be in a rut of encountering such events lately and it sure has me scrambling for a better perspective! So sit back and be ready to laugh along with me at the funny, truly insignificant events which have threatened to send me reeling over the last few days.
A couple of days ago I had promised to provide a baby meal for a family with two new little ones. I have a good, tried and true recipe which I love to make and most everyone seems to love to eat. It has only five ingredients and you can hardly mess it up... that is if all things electronic operate as promised. I had the late afternoon planned to the minute in order to have our dinner on the table just as Nathan was walking through the door and the baby meal coming out of the oven just in time to hustle it to their home. Although I was tired, I was taking great delight in watching the two dinners come together and feeling rather proud of how good they looked. Yum!
Our dinner of salmon quiche was almost done as I slid the baby meal in on the top rack of the oven. A couple of minutes later I began to smell something a little odd. I reminded me of those naughty times when I have tossed something plastic in the bonfire and hoped no one noticed. I checked the oven and noticed the top edges of the disposable paper baking dishes were turning a wee bit brown. Nothing to worry about for sure. I pulled them out and put some foil on top to keep them from being too hot and replaced them in the oven, this time on the lower rack and further from the heating element. I must add that by now our own dinner was looking and smelling delicious on the counter - ready to eat.
I returned to other kitchen work and shortly noticed that the smell of smoldering plastic was not getting less, rather it seemed to be increasing. Surely this couldn't be. I just needed to air out the oven a wee bit and all would be well. I opened the oven and quickly regretted that as I noticed the heating elements were still on trying to maintain the proper temperature - or so I thought. I quickly closed it and went back to work as up, up, up went the nasty smell coming from that gourmet looking dinner I was planning on giving away.
Just a few moments later my lovely oven gave me a warning signal and showed some mysterious error signal. I turned the oven off and silently prayed that the food would cook even without the oven on. It did seem rather hot but any "oven temperature" is surely hot feeling to me right now! I tried turning the oven back on after a few minutes only to have the same beep and error signal flash before me. A quick google search reveled that it was possible the heat sensor was bad and my oven was overheating. Having an oven thermostat in the drawer I popped it in and watched it climb all the way to 550 degrees! Yep, my oven was way too hot!
By now time seemed to be reminding me with every tick that I needed to have a ready-to-eat meal delivered in about 45 minutes. There wasn't time for this meal to fail so it simply had to work! I was still hoping to salvage the food, after all it was just cooking extra fast, right? Common sense told me to read the instructions on the pan which said to keep the oven temperature below 400 degrees. This coupled with the foul smell was proof enough that the meal was probably too toxic to eat so with all of the discouragement you can imagine I hauled it out to the porch where at least I wouldn't have to smell it anymore.
There I stood when Nathan came in the door. Our dinner was ready but I had nothing to bring to the family with new twins. I hustled my super bummed self out the door after a hasty hello and dinner explanations for my own family and rushed to the local grocery store to scrounge up a meal from the deli section. Was this a lesson in humility? I don't know but although I couldn't really laugh at it then, I do find it rather ironic now that my heat sensor had to go bad on the baby meal just minutes after our own meal was cooked to perfection. What are the odds of that?!
You would think that would check the box for necessary malfunctions of the day, however, the evening's story didn't end there. I did deliver a meal and after holding an adorable, sweet baby boy I got back in the car for the drive home. Nathan had encouraged me to enjoy the peace and quiet of the drive and that was exactly what I planned to do. I didn't get more than half a mile down the road when the low engine oil light turned on. No, no, no! Was my car out of oil now? Hadn't I had enough trouble already just a short hour before? I called Nate to see what he, my personal mechanic, knew about it and his immediate response was for me to "not touch anything else and just come home." :-) How I would have loved to do that but if the engine was truly out of oil I might not make it home with a running engine. A dead oven and a dead car didn't sound too thrilling for one evenings work!
At Nathan's suggestion I found a flat place to park and checked the oil. This was a task in itself as my slightly largish belly hampered my ability to reach the dip stick easily. I did manage, however, and after adding more oil, thanks to the wonderful mechanic of mine who keeps some handy at all times, I was on my way once again. Breathe deep, breathe deep and keep on going. Whew!
So today, two days later, I had yet another one of those odd moments that seems to mix rare events with impeccable timing... My littlest one is still in diapers, cloth diapers, and I try to let him air out a bit before I put a fresh diaper on. This has been my method for quite some time and it works quite well. He lays on my bed and plays with whatever is in reach while I run the wet diaper out to the drying rack and return quickly to cover him up before he has an accident. I might add that there have been no accidents in as long as I can remember. Well, today was different! Not different only because he decided he should go to the bathroom on my bed but because the wonderful mattress cover that daily protects my mattress from soiling was visible out my bedroom window as it hung blissfully on the clothes line. What is up with off duty mattress covers! Of all the days for him to decided to feel at ease on my bed! Did it really have to be the day I washed all the bed covers? Well it was and I couldn't even feel very frustrated in light of the other odd events of the week. I even found some humor in it! As I sopped up the mess I told him, as if he understood, that we don't go potty on mommy's bed. At first he looked at me as though it was sinking in and he felt some sort of remorse appropriate for the deed done. This solemn look of remorse, however, quickly melted away into dancing little eyes and a bright little smile. How could I not smile back at him?
So I seem to have inadvertently entered the school of comedy only it doesn't feel that way as I act out the daily scenes. I am truly hoping odd events stop happening and all things electric begin working again but in the meantime I will try to laugh and the paradoxical frustratingly funny moments that will be stories worth telling in the years to come. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment