Easy Read Slant Sided Measuring Bowls
If not for her chiropractor
appointment today, she might be outside gardening. The day is perfect for it. The sun is bright but not hot. The breeze is gentle. Last night’s rain has already loosened the
weeds and eliminated the need to irrigate.
I could get straight to grooming the
tomato plants and harvesting some basil.
But no. She had been to a Pampered Chef party earlier
in the month and unwittingly altered her immediate future. She enjoyed the socializing of course but
resisted sales pitch after sales pitch, inwardly congratulating herself for her
sustained frugality.
Among other things, she declined purchasing the easy read measuring cups. She just
had to insist that her regular glass measuring bowls, the traditional upright Pyrex
kind with red measurement lines on the side, were all she needed for measuring
liquids.
Today she regrets that
pridefulness.
Last Wednesday was her
sister’s birthday, and per tradition she had determined to bake a short cake
and deliver it with fresh strawberries. Premeasured
dry ingredients sat in an orderly row across her smooth, clean countertop. A
cake pan was buttered and dusted with flour, awaiting the lumpy, delicious batter. The oven dial had been twisted to preheat to
350 degrees. Her apron was tied neatly
around her ample middle. John Phillip
Sousa was playing in the living room.
She had positioned her very
old and well used two-cup Pyrex glass measuring bowl on the kitchen counter to
pour in buttermilk. She took one step back
and leaned forward to get a close up view of the fluid level (the buttermilk should be measured precisely,
after all). The red lines had faded
over the years, and the glass was a bit clouded by time and heavy use, so she
had to step back further still and lean in even more closely to focus on the 1
½ cup mark. This put her in an unnatural
position with her rump more in the air than it usually is, and without warning she
felt something catch in her lower back.
A knifing sensation on either
side of her spine, a shooting numbness up her back, and then sudden and extreme
immobility brought the cake baking to a complete halt. Buttermilk exploded all over the kitchen
while she crumpled gracelessly and face first to the floor.
As she surprised herself with
cursing and writhed in pain on the kitchen floor now slick with buttermilk, the
oven beeped its cheerful arrival at the needed baking temperature of 350
degrees. It would sit, preheated but
empty, oblivious to the drama, for the rest of the evening until her husband
would exhaustedly stumble in for a midnight snack and notice the lone red light
signaling readiness. He would twist the
dial back to “off.” Mission
aborted. Oven unfulfilled.
It had been a humiliating
phone call to make, reporting that she had fallen and may have broken her back
while measuring buttermilk. But her
dutiful husband had of course rushed home from work and taken her immediately
to the emergency room. There, she had to
reexperience the accident nine or ten more times to different nurses and
physicians with clipboards. More than
one younger, slightly more elastic woman had to restrain smiles of either pity
or unfeeling laughter, it was hard to tell.
Her back was not broken, but
she was seriously injured. Her jaw bone
and right shoulder were bruised, too.
If only she had shelled out
the money at that Pampered Chef party for the slanted-sides measuring
bowls! The extra expense seemed too
large at the time, wasteful even
considering her arsenal of Pyrex sitting at home. But now, seeing the hundreds of dollars being
paid to the chiropractor’s office for back adjustments, to the pharmacy for muscle
creams, and to fast food restaurants for take out dinner because she is in too
much pain to cook for her husband, a trip back in time to buy those Pampered Chef
mixing bowls would fix everything and save a small fortune.
But to the injury tending she
returns, and her garden sits, unattended, becoming slowly reclaimed by the
wild. The tomatoes will rot on the vine, she thinks.
Across the street her neighbor
is drinking iced tea on her own front porch, enjoying a perfectly manicured
lawn and a thoroughly weeded flower bed.
I bet she ordered the easy read measuring cups.
Ha!! Fine! I'll go order measuring cups!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a fabulous story. I'm hoping it's not about my Green Goose friend, but a figment of her imagination. I might sorta snicker, though, if it is. Cuz, that's how you roll.