I view myself as a strong, independent woman. I was fine being single. I don’t NEED Otto, you understand. I just WANT him. I like having him around, because he’s cute and funny and my rotten children often do not laugh at my lame jokes. But I could totally manage without him if I had to, despite his frequent assertions that I married him simply either for his health insurance or because I needed a lawn boy.
Once the freezer was cleaned out the other night, many items had been thrown away. Various mystery or in-need-of-disposal items, however, were in glass containers, and so we chucked them into the sink for defrosting so that the containers could be dumped out and then cleaned.
Yesterday—because my Pavlovian response to a big stack of dishes in the sink is to make an even bigger mess in the kitchen—I baked some “one-bowl muffins” which, true, only used one bowl, but also used my food processor and a bunch of other items, and filled the sink the rest of the way up. Once I got dinner going, I finally turned to cleaning up the carnage. I loaded the dishwasher, dumped out now-defrosted containers, washed items by hand, and then… turned on the garbage disposal when I was all done.
Did I mention, yesterday, all of the little containers of pesto in the back of the freezer? Darling tiny glass jars, each one juuuust small enough to slip down the drain unnoticed and be ground into a couple dozen jagged shards of glass while I cursed and leapt to turn off the disposal. Whoops. Nice work, me! So I’ll tell you that I don’t NEED Otto, but it’s a lie, because yesterday I needed him to extract all that broken glass and fix the garbage disposal. Or maybe I’m NOT a dumbass, and I just like making sure he feels needed. HARD TO TELL.
Whether I need him or not, soon it’s going to be just him and me again, so today I’m over at Alpha Mom planning for the future. (Not on my list: grinding up more pesto jars.)
It is nice to be needed.
-otto
Hush. Gimme that health insurance.
She needs it for the cut fingers :)
OK, how do you…extract glass from the garbage disposal? Can you tip it upside down and shake it over the trash can? Use tweezers?
I used my hands (NOT RECOMMENDED) and then moved to a set of salad tongs and then gave up. He came home and used the shop vac. #myhero
No, no, nonononoNO! Have you never seen a horror movie?! I cringe every time someone on TV or in a movie puts a hand down the garbage disposal. That is the EXACT moment that machines spring to life and become evil, Mir!
;)
EXACTLY!
I’ve been told that glass is good for cleaning garbage disposals and sharpening them. I’ve never actually tried it though. Medal tops however….. not good!
Strange, but true, story. My dad had a plumber come to fix the disposal when we were kids. After showing us how to crank the huge allen wrench to unstick it, and hitting the reset button, he proceeded to break a baby food jar and toss it in to “sharpen the blades”. Needless to say, we never had him back…
Childhood trauma alert. I may have been a slightly moody teenager sulking as i did the dishes one night. Muttering, tossing things with vehemence into the sink. I fling the garbage disposal on and then watch a steak knife fly out at me, sharp end first, inches from my face while my dad looked on in disbelief. He wasn’t even mad that he had to replace the blade to the disposal since I was almost impaled.
I continue to have an abundantly healthy fear of garbage disposals. I always stand as far as humanly possible from the sink before throwing the switch.
I’m scared of those things too! And a friend was JUST telling me the other day that she almost accidentally shredded her hand trying to extract glass from one. :-O
Lie to me, sweetie, and tell me you unplugged it first. Or at least killed the fuse?