I come to you today, a sad woman. I have lost my best appliance
in the whole wide world. An appliance that allowed my family to eat
regularly. An appliance that was faithful. And the worst part is,
the death of that appliance was my fault.
I come to you today, a sad woman. I have lost my best appliance in the whole wide world. An appliance that allowed my family to eat regularly. An appliance that was faithful. And the worst part is, the death of that appliance was my fault.
Yes, I killed our microwave.
And when I say “killed,” I mean that I made sure that thing was well and truly dead. I’m not going to bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that you should never, and I mean NEVER, cook rice for 45 minutes in the microwave. Also? Walking upstairs to do laundry, then getting distracted with a DVR’d episode of “Law & Order: UK” while microwaving rice for 45 minutes isn’t a good plan, either.
So the next day Harry removed the microwave from its little built-in cabinet thingy. Apparently, this was not as easy it sounds, because he was swearing up a storm. And groaning about his back and how old he was and how irresponsible it was to cook rice in a microwave for 45 minutes. And calling for Junior to get his butt into the kitchen “right now” to help him get the darned thing out. Only he didn’t use the words “darned” and “butt.”
Anyway, after they got the microwave out of the cabinet – and I cleaned up the blood spots on the floor because when Harry removed the front piece of the cabinet he didn’t get all the little headless nails out of it first – they plopped the microwave on the kitchen table.
And there it sat for three days. And four days. And pretty soon, an entire week had passed. And I don’t mind telling you that this was the longest week of my entire life. Have you tried heating up leftovers without a microwave? I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. I had to keep calling my mom to ask her how it was done in the olden days.
The first time I called her, I asked how to heat soup. Turns out, you can do that in a pot on the stove. Who knew? Then I asked how to heat up pasta. Turns out you can fry it in butter and it’s really, really good that way. Possibly even better than heating it in the microwave.
In the meantime, Harry walked by the microwave every day and never once looked at it to fix it. And after nearly two weeks had passed, I told Harry we needed to either fix it or get a new one. Guess which one he chose? Get a new one. Yeah, I was shocked too. Guess he was hungry.
So we bought the only microwave at the home improvement store that would fit in the cabinet thingy and brought it home. Then Harry and Junior jammed it into the little cabinet thingy. There was a lot more swearing, but not as much as blood. And suddenly, the new microwave was out of the box, in the cabinet and with a flourish, Harry removed the plastic covering on the front to reveal: A giant dent the size of a baby’s head right smack in the front of the door.
You know, right in the spot where the box had been dented when we first looked at it in the store and I said, “Will the microwave be dented there?” And Harry said, “I don’t know, but it’s the only one they have.” Yeah. Right there.
Well, you just know that there was a lot more swearing and a lot more blood then, even without the nails. So we returned the microwave, only to find that there were no more microwaves on the planet that would fit in the cabinet thingy.
OK, maybe there were some on the planet, but seriously? There were none within a 25-mile radius of Gilroy.
So we ordered it online. And the day it arrived, Junior and Harry put it in the cabinet thingy where it sparkled and shone and didn’t have any baby-head sized dents. And the very first day we had it, we warmed up soup.
So good to have home cooking once again.
