25.8.03

The Curse of the Pilsener Glasses

There is one, you know. It haunts our kitchen cabinet --- the centre cabinet, with the glass doors. There were six pilsener glasses, to begin with. I bought them on sale at Tangs. They were utilitarian, yet with a faintly sensuous curve that suggested there was more to them than being mere storers of water. They weren't too tall, yet weren't so dainty that they would have to be refilled with every mouthful. They were the first set of glasses we had that I purchased.*

Then I broke one. I was washing two in the sink last week, after we'd had our occasional bedtime glasses of milk, and the one under the tap tipped over from the water rushing into it. Before my brain could even register that I should catch it --- or maybe my fingers were reorienting themselves to catch it, but they failed --- anyway, it smashed. Gloriously. Loudly. My echo, a curt, "Shit!"

Fortunately, it broke into large shards that made it easier to clean up. Even more fortunately, it didn't smash the other glass that was also being washed. I thought it was a good thing that it broke in the sink (again: easier to clean up), but last Saturday T apparently cut his foot on a lurking shard, so maybe not so much.

So then there were five.

Tonight, there are four. I was filling one with water after I got home, and I remember thinking, "It's filling up nicely, we'll just tip the bottle back in a minute when the glass is full..." Somewhere between the end of that thought-dangle, the bottle slipped in my hand, chipping off the side of the glass and pretty much taking off the entire top one-third of it. Water sloshed over the glass's new rim, pooling around the fragments and the stout base. And again: "Shit."

I think I got all the fragments this time and I wiped down the kitchen counter pretty good, expecting to find my hands shredded by glass slivers at any minute --- I wouldn't know I was cut, see, because you know, you get cut, it takes a good few seconds before the sensation of pain kicks in and you realize you're actually bleeding all over the place.

I'm just waiting to see where the curse strikes next.

* The wineglasses were a present; our shot glasses were mostly acquired before we got married or even knew each other. These pilsener glasses were our first glasses.

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Somewhat surprisingly, in the time we've had this kitchen, I've nicked my finger on a knife but never sliced it open with any real drama. (Of course, now that I've said this, I've jinxed myself.) But this one time, in college, when I was living in the dorm, I managed to slice my middle finger open with a chef's knife, like with a wee flap of skin hanging off and all that. Surprisingly, I did not cry. I somehow held skin together, rinsed it under the water, and taped it over with a Band-aid (errrrr, the generic kind).

When it was still bleeding the next day, I crossed the street to go to University Health and presented my sliced finger to the doctor (or it might have been a nurse practitioner). She said it was too late to stitch it up, seeing as a whole day had passed, and promptly gave me painkillers instead. ASPIRIN. In a little brown bag. They gave me aspirin when my finger was sore and bleeding. I'm surprised I've still got it, wee scar and all. It's funny how a huge gaping cut will turn into a miniscule scar less than ten years later.

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I wanted to talk about the cat that lives by the walkway from my estate to the MRT* station, but I'm a little too wiped now. That's what watching episodes of Boomtown (featuring Joel-angst) and ER (starring the Night when No Lives Were Lost) back-to-back will do to you.

I bought Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth today. It was an impulse buy, in that I was at Borders, and then I realized I had a wee bit of extra cash this week, and The Beauty Myth fell neatly into my budget. I don't exactly have a sterling feminist section in our home library, but I'm trying to pick up all the classics when I can.

One of my friends asked me today what I write in my blog. He thinks they're written by people who wear their hearts on their sleeves. If I do fall into that category, I think it's because so much of my (work)day is spent squishing my heart into a Civil Service-shaped cubicle.

Oh, another friend is egging me on to jot down anecdotes about Civil Service life, so that I can write a witty book when I leave. It's an intriguing proposition, but may take more discipline than I possess. It may also require me to engage far more legal counsel in the long run.

At this point, I'm out of thoughts. Goodnight!

*MRT = Mass Rapid Transit = subway

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