On: Cheesegate

I was feeling a bit emotional and frantic the days and minutes leading up to an event we will, from here on out, call #cheesgate.

When one has too much time to think, unfortunately that thinking can -- and often does -- go sour. And after these ideas turn to worry; they birth a variety of other negatives which wouldn’t have been possible if not for the superfluous thinking to begin with.

Sometimes you hear people talking about planting those good mental seeds; think positive – they say cheerfully…. and look on the bright side. Time after time, articles, blogs, papers, quotes, and books proclaim that being positive is the way forward. I’ve read that being positive will help you have mostly positive experiences. This is probably true and we all know it.

Getting out of bed to whine about the cold floor or the bad dream, surely becomes the stubbed toe and burnt toast, traffic, spill, trip, arrrggghhhhh! Even though I believe this idea and for the most part try to live by it, sometimes I lose my way – BIG TIME.

#Cheesegate

June 14^th 2016

I was mid lather that afternoon, feeling lonely and feeling crabby, feeling sorry for myself. So many feelings! Things were not going perfectly, and I was in hard focus to that fact. It was, of course, raining; the load of clean towels just finishing up in the washer had no hope of getting dry out on the line. Waaaaaa…

This is also slightly embarrassing to write because I am fully aware that I was being ridiculous. My perceived problems gingerly cheered on by my PMS, are not actual problems. These types of problems are cushy, invented problems founded in boredom and they are wholly useless. I fully respect that people in the world have real problems like pain, illness, heartache, hunger, and loss to name a few; I know that I need to reserve my worry and sadness for those inevitable days, in the course of a lifetime, filled with actual problems.

 

6:05 PM: The rain has finally stopped, and I think to myself: ‘what’s the easiest, fastest dinner I can make?’ As I busy myself tidying the kitchen, my fiancé arrives home from work; shortly after him my dinner idea arrives too, ‘that’s it, I can make us Grilled Cheese!’

Fast-forward, I’m making grilled cheese sandwiches with shredded cheddar, butter and fresh bread. When they first become ready to be flipped, not all of the cheese is melted, yet being somewhat of an expert on the nuances of grilled cheese sandwiches, I know in my heart it’s time to carefully flip the bread. The first flip is delicate but necessary. I slide the spatula in one swift motion under the first sandwich; my plan is to use two fingers to hold the premature creation together as I ease it to the other side. Unfortunately my brain was two steps ahead of what was happening real time. All it took was one snag, faster than I realized, the pan slipped a few inches from the center of the pegs around the gas flame. It then fell towards the floor, red hot, I had no choice but to step back and watch my day finally crumble into utter imperfection—just as I expected.   The red hot pan didn’t just land face up allowing me to then use the handle to simply pick it up and make a small set back into an easy fix – NO, no, nooooo …  it landed face up, but only after one full rotation ejecting the bread and cheese into mid-air while simultaneously decorating and trashing the room in an instant; #cheesegate was real and it just happened.

After its mid fall rotation, the red hot pan melted swiftly to the lovely IKEA kitchen rug and the odor of burnt yarn immediate hit my nose. I yelled a few obscenities, glanced towards the open window to see our neighbors, the nicest, rabbit-owning, vegetarian, lesbians I’ve ever met, thrust into the drama of #cheesegate simply by proximity.

I swiftly ran away to lick my wounds, and I passed my man on my way from the kitchen, leaving him to take in the chaos…  a melted rug, hairy dinner, cheese explosion, two glaring and curious lesbians, a gas, cooking flame, still burning and all of this set to the sweet, sweet background music of my sobs. An anthem, of defeat wafted from my lungs.