Toast and Heroism

Well, m’dears, once again my family does not fully appreciate me.

Growing up my dad instilled a firm concern that one ALWAYS unplugs the toaster after one is done using it. If not, the plug could cause an electrical mishap of some kind, the result of which is that the house will burn down. The specifics are pretty fuzzy, but the directive of keeping the toaster unplugged when not in use is crystal clear and firmly ingrained.

I have no idea why it is that toaster plugs are so dangerous, and not other plugs like the oven or the fridge or the television. Apparently I never thought to apply critical thinking skills enough to ask. However, this assertion did get some inadvertent support when my mother purchased a toaster oven for my husband and myself.

Side note: Just to show again how little critical thinking is involved in my life, when the toaster oven arrived the picture on the box showed an image of what looked like a turkey being cooked inside. I might perhaps have gotten very excited to be able to cook a turkey, since the reason I was given a toaster oven in the first place is that we were going on two years of a non-working oven. The fact that the box was not bigger than a turkey didn’t register at all. Therefore, when I opened the box to behold my new toaster oven, noticing the area with which to cook things was NOT going to fit a turkey, I was quite unwarrantedly shocked and disappointed. The photo must have been of a Cornish game hen or something. Not one of my brighter moments. *Ahem*

We never quite got the hang of the toaster oven in the kitchen, so my husband absconded with it into his workshop for project related purposes. At some point he wrapped it in a black garbage bag to keep out dust, etc., and put it on a shelf under his work bench—plugged in.

One day we arrived home after being out, and I went downstairs and passed the open workshop door, where I was surprised to see light shining. I looked in to behold the toaster oven glowing like the jaws of some monster in a special effects horror movie from the center of a dark cocoon of melted plastic. Somehow something had turned on and it wasn’t going well. We considered ourselves EXTREMELY lucky, since if we hadn’t happened to get home and notice it, we are pretty sure the fiery wreck of our house would have been on the news that evening. Even if the fire wouldn’t have spread on its own, my husband’s workshop is full of very flammable and dangerous things, many of which were on the shelf directly above it.

Clearly toaster related appliances can not be trusted.

Now, my family had somehow become non-bread eaters. The bread I purchased would get moldy well before it was consumed. Therefore, I quit buying bread, and no one in my house noticed. So the toaster sat quietly (and unplugged) on the kitchen counter with no ill effects. However, with the current pandemic situation my family is now home all the time and an unexpected side effect of this is that they have rediscovered toast. Bread has returned to the grocery list, and someone in the house makes toast every day.

Which means that every day I go behind my family and unplug the toaster.

My husband recently lost his temper, because WHY is it that someone keeps uplugging the toaster? He finds having to plug it in every time he wishes to use it a mild irritation that is building up to full out annoyance. My earnest explanation of toaster plug danger was met with a bewildered look of incredulity.  

DUDE. I AM SAVING YOU ALL FROM DYING IN A HORRIBLE AND FIERY DEATH.

So now my husband sighs every time he plugs the toaster back in to make toast. And I come behind him like freaking Wonder Woman to save him from himself, since he clearly doesn’t fully comprehend the full risk of toast related demise.

Heroes are unappreciated in every day life, y’all.

In completely unrelated news, the complications of construction are ongoing. However, I have managed to complete one new painting. I have been trying to get out with my camera, and in some ways I believe I am going backward in my quest to become a better photographer. I am taking some truly terrible photos…err… I am getting in LOTS of learning time! Yes, that’s it. However, even extremely poor quality photos can sometimes spark an idea. I have diverged from my normal style and turned this:

into this:

Still working in acrylic at the moment, because honesty? I can’t currently locate anything else! 🙂