sueeeus

I love potato chips because they are salty, crispy, and oh so satisfying.  Duh.  Now, as to why I love engineers, or rather, working with engineers.  If I didn’t work with engineers, what is the likelihood that I would have viewed Mercury in its path across the sun on this very day   Would anybody have brought a solarscope in to the office   Methinks the chances are slim.  How fascinating!  This experience has made my day!

I hope my little one becomes interested in astronomy.  I recently went on a quest for a planetarium of sorts.  I wanted a night light that projects a night sky on his ceiling, so we could look up and talk about it while he drifts off to sleep.  I didn’t find much of anything with any sort of decent customer reviews.  There was a turtle toy with a shell that had little perforations in it, that supposedly projected a night sky when lit, but it seemed a little meh.  Instead, I gave up the quest and got a multicolored LED nightlight that slowly changes colors, from red to green to blue to violet and back again.  It’s a hit, but it casts an eery shape on the wall, reminiscent of a horned devil, and nearly no imagination at all is needed to get spooked during the red rotation.  I’m not so fond of this night light.

Oh yes.  I nearly forgot.  Another reason why I love working with engineers.  Some of the old timers were wondering about the new person we are getting this week.  New to their group, not new to the company. 

I wonder how old she is, said one. 

(What does it matter )  About my age, says I.  (I know of her, from days gone by.  There aren’t so many women engineers around, so the names are easily remembered.) 

Twenties, then   said they. 

God BLESS them! 

Forties, said I. 

I love them dearly, yes I do.

But spilt wine   Now that’s a different matter entirely.

Last night I stopped for some milk and got sidetracked by that most enticing smell of freshly baked French bread.  It was still warm from the oven, so I couldn’t resist.  Once home, I lamented the absence of wine in the house.  How I love a glass of wine with fresh French bread!  After a little foraging, Fortuna smiled upon me, and a bottle emerged from the deepest darkest depths of the pantry.  I was delighted.  Delighted!  But what happened to my wine glasses   Mr. Gadget insists that I donated them in my last kitchen purge.  Honestly, I have no recollection of such a deed.  Especially considering how much I love a glass of red wine in a giant round goblet.  Aesthetics.  So important.  Helpful as he is, he retrieved a heavy crystal goblet from the far reaches of the cupboard.  I’ve kept them for sentimentality’s sake.  They were, after all, my first goblets, purchased twenty years ago in my fresh from poverty transformation to a young urban professional. 

Ah, how pleasant that first glass.  As the second.  Deciding to show some restraint, I tried to replace the cork in the bottle, to save it for a rainy day (i.e., tomorrow).  After a short struggle, the bottle claimed victory, leaping from my grasp and clattering to the counter with a loud clang, the precious nectar of the vine splaying this way and that.  Glug, glug, glug, how quickly the crimson pool spread.

I burst into tears and sobbed like a child.

It wasn’t so much the spilt wine, as it was the accumulation of recent bumbles.  Earlier that evening I had dropped a stack of cooling racks, cookie sheets, and a chartreuse ceramic lasagne dish, the latter which shattered into a thousand pieces.  Disappointed   Yes.  Distraught   No. 

Recently as well, I lost my grasp on a stack of dishes at the edge of the sink, and dropped them all.  They tumbled into the sink with a loud crash.  Surprisingly, nothing broke. 

Earlier in the day, I had some vertigo.  Add to that some tingling in the hands and shortness of breath.  Google is most unceremonious and insensitive as it serves frightening phrases such as brain tumor and bipolar disorder, both which are very real experiences of people I love, neither of which apply to me.  (It’s not denial.  It’s anxiety.  Anxiety is my thorn in the flesh.)

Germane or not, the din and clash of the wine bottle tumbling to its near demise proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  The tears were cathartic.  I needed the release.