After a good 45 minutes of failure, I suggested that Joe should make pancakes, because – for me at least – that would make up for not being able to get back to sleep. He declined, saying, “But then I’d have to get up, and I don’t want to.”

A fair point, but I really wanted those pancakes. I could have made a reasonable attempt at making my own, but his are always better (and love is not the secret ingredient, cursing our apparently less-than-satisfactory spatula is). Anyway, I ended up with toast and tea, and he had a bagel. It was OK I guess, but I tasted phantom pancakes in every bite.

Later, we had the following discussion regarding Joe’s lack of sympathy for my failure to turn on my laptop and update Windows during the last month or so:

Me: Goddamn it. 22 Windows updates on my laptop. I should have kept on that I guess.
Joe: Ha ha.
Me: Your lack of sympathy has been noted. I reserve the right to spit in your food.
Joe: So noted. I reserve the right to eat any and all of the pancakes in your future.
Me: What??!! That’s an outrage! Outrage! My pancakes are mine. And so are yours for that matter.

And this is where autocorrect, or possibly my poor texting skills, stepped in to help me make my point:

Me: All the pancakes ate mine.
Joe: (probably smirking as he typed) Typo = failure to make outraged point. Plus, cannibalistic pancakes would be cool.

And so they would.

Hard to say if the strawberry is traumatized, or shocked at the sheer amount of free syrup on the ground.

]]> http://www.rambleicious.ca/2012/01/portrait-of-a-crime-scene/feed/ 0 http://www.rambleicious.ca/2011/01/the-trouble-with-garburators/ http://www.rambleicious.ca/2011/01/the-trouble-with-garburators/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:45:56 +0000 rambleicious http://www.rambleicious.ca/?p=979 Joe and I moved in September to a new apartment in North Vancouver – it’s a HUGE improvement on the old place. Some of its best features are:

• No more demon-spawn upstairs.
• A partial view of downtown.
• Proximity to things like groceries and sushi.
• A gas stove and fireplace.

I do miss having access to a compost bin though – we throw away a lot more garbage than I’d like now. Our disappointment at being without a composter is somewhat mollified by the presence of the garburator; we can dispose of our lettuce bits and soggy Cheerios that way.

I admit it, I have a childish sense of glee when stuffing old lettuce bits, leafy end first, down the garburator and then hitting the button and watching the lettuce spin as it get chewed up and disappears. I’m sure I had the same sort of fascination with the toilet as a child when flushing marbles and keys down it – garburators are just a more grown-up form of the same fun.

So, this past weekend I toddled off on Sunday to go to East is East with a friend. We ate amazing food and chatted and, though I was completely stuffed from lunch, I ordered their vegan chocolate pudding to take home and enjoy later. It looked so amazing – dark chocolate with fresh coconut sprinkled on top – what could be bad about that?

Later that evening, I decided to try the pudding. The chocolate was good and dark with a hint of some sort of spice in it, and it had some chunks in it reminiscent of grapes. I hadn’t been expecting bits in it and swallowed one of them whole. That was it for me. In my limited and dull world, pudding does not have chunks. So I told Joe to try it (this is the fun of being married – you get to share all your chunky pudding experiences with someone!). Joe did not like the pudding;  not even the chocolate part, which I did like.

The chunks were disposed of down the garburator and neither of us thought anything more about it.

Fast-forward to about 20 minutes ago. I am cleaning up from lunch and I see that there are lettuce bits to be disposed of. I stuff them down the garburator in the usual manner and hit the switch. The lettuce spins, but the garburator is making a horrible grinding sound. I stop it spinning, run some hot water down it and his the switch again. More grinding – and somehow it’s louder.

Now, I know you’re not supposed to stick your hand beyond the rubber sheet thingy, but how else can you figure out what’s wrong with a garburator? So I soldier on, reasonably sure there are no poltergeists waiting to hit the switch and amputate my hand when I’m not looking, when my fingers hit something slimy. It has a hard centre and then a thick, almost fibrous, coating of slime on it. I pull gently at the tail end of the slime and everything comes up.

This is shameful, but I squealed with alarm and jumped back from the counter, for in the tiny sink, by the opening of the garburator, lay this:

I feel certain that this used to be one of the grapey-bits from the pudding.

On Sunday, it was a pudding covered globe of something edible; now, it is a white and grey trail of slime. I didn’t think anything decayed that quickly outside of horror films and time-lapse photography. I crept back to the sink and peeked in. The slime hadn’t moved and it looked relatively harmless, so I scooped it up on a spoon and dumped it in a discarded Shredded Wheat packet.

I ran the garburator again. It was still making a terrible racket.

I grabbed a small flashlight and a sturdy wooden spoon and lifted the rubber sheet. There were two more, much larger, pools of slime.

My skin crawled with revulsion, but I got them out using the wooden spoon to haul it up the side of the garburator and another spoon to keep it from slipping back into the drain. These slime pools joined the first in the Shredded Wheat packet. I washed my hands – twice! – and then rinsed the garburator with scalding hot water and pressed the button. No more grinding noise; the garburator was free of decayed grapey-things.

I sat down at my desk, prepared to resume writing and ignore the paranoid part of my mind that was telling me that not only are the slime pools sentient, but that they are also angry and hungry for human flesh – when it hit me. I could share this horror with the world. I could post this online and make sure that everyone who comes here can see the grossness that is decayed, possibly sentient, grapey-things!

And, feeling much better about things, I did just that.

Oh trimethylxanthine-
psychoactive stimulant,
make my morning great.

I think I’m becoming immune to its effects in small doses though and this makes me sad.

Maybe if I stopped drinking Coke (I don’t drink much, but I’ve really developed a taste for the stuff) and just drank green tea, I’d actually feel the effects of caffeine again.

Come on caffeine – I’ll work better if you work your magic.