Just a Quick Tuna Sandwich, Please

OK, as a mom, wife, and teacher the foibles of those around me dictate the majority of the time I spend awake each day. And some of the sleeping time too. However, the effect of the discourtesy of others can bring the most pleasant day to a halt. Normally it takes several hours or days to demonstrate this, but on one recent night, the cumulative effect became painfully clear.

As I´ve said before, I´m working several jobs so when the end of the day comes for me, I´m very tired. One evening, no so long ago I came home around 11:00 p.m. after the third consecutive day of roughly fifteen hours (including drive time) at work. I hadn´t taken the time for supper, and I just wanted something to take the edge off my hunger. This is the chain of events set off by my simple desire for a snack.

1. 11:00 p.m.: I opened the fridge and spotted left-over steak from my family´s supper. I picked up the plate and after some consideration, decided I wasn´t in the mood for a cold lump of flesh. I pushed the plate back onto the shelf.


2. This caused an open bag of fortune cookies to spill at the back of the shelf. Apparently I should have introduced the concept of the twist-tie to my family.


3. I reached to the back of the shelf to collect the fortune cookies only to have the majority of them fall through the space at the back of the shelf and topple behind the crisper drawers. Clumsy of me, but OK, I carried on.


4. I removed the crisper drawers to retrieve the cookies to find that someone has spilled milk in the fridge and hadn´t bothered to clean it up. By the time I got to it, it had coagulated in a gooey, stinky mess on the floor of the fridge. I´m sure the phrase, "If you spill it, please clean it up," has been spoken many times in our home but it must not have applied to this particular spill.


5. 11:05 p.m.: I filled a bucket with hot soapy water and proceeded to pull the fridge apart to clean up the goopy milk spill. During this process, I of course managed to get all manner of gunk on my kitchen floor.


6. 11:25 p.m.: I wiped up the floor around the fridge only to notice that the rest of the floor also needed sweeping. So I got out the broom and gave the kitchen a once-over.


7. 11:40 p.m.: Floor looked good. Fridge was clean. On with the snack. Having dismissed anything in the fridge, I opened the cupboards and saw the promised land. "I´ll have a tuna sandwich," I thought to myself. I plucked the tuna can from the shelf and got out the can opener.


8. As I opened the can to drain it, I of course, dropped the can, splashing tuna juice all over myself, my glasses (ew), and my kitchen window. Drat. Now I had to clean up the window and myself.


9. 11:50 p.m.: Floor looked good. Fridge was clean. Window was sparkling. Changed into my jammies, I dumped the tuna into a bowl. I retrieved the mayo from the sparkling clean fridge without incident and reached for the Spanish onion. All gone. Not a problem, I had more onions in the veggie bowl on the counter. I reached over to the bowl and saw there was a bag of green tomatoes on the top. "Hmmm, " I thought. "I wonder where those came from? Guess the onion is underneath." Which it was. Right beside a suspicious black, leaky lump that upon inspection turned out to be the remains of a banana. Nice.


10. 11:55 p.m.: I cleaned up the disgusting mess in the veggie bowl, chopped up the onion and made what by this point was going to be the best tuna salad ever created because I was so hungry I was actually getting dizzy. All I needed now was the bread and I was home free. I opened the fridge to get bread and...


11. 12:05 a.m.: No bread. Downstairs to the freezer I went to get up a loaf of bread. Guess when you empty something, it´s sacrilege to fill it back up. Once I had the frozen loaf, I chipped off a couple of slices to use for my sandwich and put the remainder, with the twist tie firmly attached, back into the fridge. They were frozen though, so I figured I´d just give ´em a little zap in the microwave to thaw them out.


12. 12:10 a.m.: Guess what? Someone spilled something exceedingly greasy in the microwave and left it as a gift for me. Wasn´t that thoughtful? Now I had to clean the mike before I could use it for the entire ten seconds I´d need to thaw two slices of bread.


13. 12:20 a.m.: Floor looked good. Fridge was clean. Window was sparkling. Rotten food was gone. Bread was full. Microwave was santized. Could I just have my #$%#^#$% sandwich, please? And yes, thankfully, I could. One hour and twenty minutes after I started.

Ever feel like slapping someone if they ask you why it takes so long to get something done?