Sep 10, 2008

That's what burning teeth smell like

Remember the peppers I mentioned yesterday? You'll enjoy this.

Last night as I left work, I was wondering what I should eat for dinner, when my brain chimed in and said,"It's going to get colder, so how about chili?"
"Sweet," I told my brain. "good job."

I went to the market and learned two things:
1) filling the hand basket with canned tomato sauce, diced maters, tomato paste and a family pack of burger gets heavy after four aisles or so, and
2) don't go to the store on the day that the circular comes out with the sales listed.

After setting down the goods on the table and retrieving the pot from the cabinet, I began to assemble what I thought was going to be the first masterpiece of the culinary season. I thought wrong, and very wrong, but that's for later.

Never being one for following a recipe to make chili, seeing as I've been making the stuff for over a decade, I still generally follow certain steps so that I can taste it as it goes along, guaranteeing the quality. Tomato sauce; check. Brooks chili hot beans; check. Minced garlic; check.
I have never really plopped anything into the pot as it starts to simmer, as you never know how hot the freed blops of splashed chili may be when they land on your arm, or more to the point in this case, the inside of my right nostril. The garlic and chili pepper laced hot tomato sauce immediately began to auger in to my old factory. I started to cry like I had been punched in the nose while watching Roy Hobbes hit the lights-out home run at the end of The natural. It is an unnatural act to snort water, but I was willing to try anything to get that homemade napalm out of my nose.
Getting that under control, I started cutting up the onions and putting them in the pot. I don't cut them on a board. I instead hold the onions (one at a time) in my left hand and dice bit by bit down to the end. When I can no longer hold the onion, it's done and on to the next one. Well, I stripped the scrappy stuff from the outside of the first one and walked over to the pot and made the first cuts this way, then the second cuts this way, then owwwwwwwww. HOW IN THE FLYING-ASS-MOTHER-FUCK CAN THIS HAPPEN? I'M WEARING GLASSES! The onion had squirted me in the left eye and began to BUURRRRRRRRRRRRN. I started cussing like I was trying out for the part of Ralphie's dad in The Christmas Story. I was so pissed off that I grabbed the pot to throw the fucking thing out in the yard. However, the pot was spared when I missed the handles and managed to grab both sides of a scalding hot pot and burn my hands. Immediately dropping the pot, and still with one eyeful of onion juice turning it into sulfuric acid, and the other eye again full of tears, and now my nose running, I ran to the sink to cool my hands while I flooded my eyes this time with water.
Do you know how hard it is to see when you're pissed off, and teared up? Hard enough to not notice two things:
1)the tap, with the water purifier on it, is closer than i thought, and
2)I was still wearing my glasses
So, now I have an acidic eyeball, burnt hands, and a cut on the bridge of my nose where I smashed my face into the tap. Yay.
I ran upstairs to the shower, turned on the water and stood in front of the head. After drenching myself long enough to see again, I toweled off and went back to my masterpiece, this black pot of steaming hatred.

this isn't the end of the story, but I want to get home, to put on new bandages. Pt 2 tomorrow.

7 comments:

Dan said...

Next time, just tell your brain to shut up our you'll stab it with a Q-tip.

Dan said...

When I read the title of this post, I thought it was going to be about a trip to the dentist.

KAISER ANDY I said...

It's about a trip to the gastro-burn unit!

Ted said...

Good stuff Andy. For some reason your pain makes me laugh.

Did this really happen, or is it a script from an old WC Fields movie?

KAISER ANDY I said...

the only two people that can hurt me are the Yooj and me.
Things tend to snowball when I'm in what is deemed an "injury spiral".

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