I hate broken glass, with extreme prejudice. I have fears related to broken glass going well into my youth. My experiences including aggressively digging through a kitchen trashcan looking for something I'd unintentionally discarded only to be widely skewered by the upright base of a drinking glass very much like the one I know just hit the ground. My mid-80s company beach outing ended with my "fire-pit parlor trick" of consuming a glass of Chardonnay with no hands going horribly wrong. I stepped on a very small piece of glass about 15 years ago that logged into my big toe in a manner that was simply too deep to extract, resulting in a podiatrist visit to sit and watch the blood-drenched extraction in real time. These are just a couple of examples.
And there was that whole "Omen" scene with the priest and the rolling truck filled with stacked panes of glass. When my ex-wife and I rented the duplex on Cartlon Ave I expressed my hesitations about standing too close to the large glass street-facing picture window out of fear that the non-safety glass in place would prove fatal with just the wrong angle of stumble or fall. And yet, I could (and did) lean my full-body weight up against the observation tower windows at the top of the World Trade Center just two months before they came crashing down.
Oh, and of course, when this all just happened, when I knocked the glass to the ground, yeah, I was barefoot.
I stood at the sink, hands resting on the counter as I glanced back at the fan-shaped splay of glass, freshly broken down to the finest dust-sized grains of sand, and I signed. It's a work day and I was working. I was just getting some coffee while mentally composing a response to a text I had just received regarding my son being at my house at the time, outside of his custodial time with her (I'll save that for another blog) when this all happened, and the big pause-button in the sky turned red.
My son had just left and this poorly placed glass incident was all his fault. Sorta. My gut wanted to go there out of irritation and frustration that my routine insistence that glasses not be set in the sink, for the same reason, failed to also instill a consideration of the risks that accompany it's placement at the edge of a counter. Silly me. I guess for me, with my phobia and/or experienced insight, think it should be as inherently obvious as not striking a match while standing next to a stack of crates labeled "Acme Explosives Inc.". I wished he was still there because I wanted to blame it on him, instead of me, but I stopped myself. Because it wasn't in the sink, and it's placement was, although close to the edge, still on the dish drainer I was standing too close to from the get go.
It's hard sometimes to put a gut-reaction on hold. I muttered and mumbled profanities as I cautiously and carefully navigated my way out of that glass-filled region, but with a freshly made resignation to just roll with this. I pulled out the trash and started carefully looking for sparkling bits and pieces reflecting against the kitchen lights above. I worked my way carefully through most of it until I could safely retrieve a broom from the adjacent room, only to discover, while returning with said broom, that I had been gracefully spared the skin-piercing impact of an upward pointing shard along the path I'd just walked. I had overlooked during my cleanup pass #1, and could have easily just put my full weight on it. Jesus, I really hate broken glass.
I swept, swept again, vacuumed, corner and edge vacuumed, under the fridge vacuumed, and all-nooks-and-crannies vaccumed too. Then, I checked the dog's water bowl and dish. It was well out of expected range but, you know, just in case. It's the dog.
I love drinking from glass but I hate everything to do with broken glass. I love the taste of burnt-to-a-crisp hash-browns but despise how it all gets into the steel wool when cleaning out the cast iron pan. I love the sound of live music but hate the crowds that typically require navigating around. I love when technology "just works" and find it infuriating when something as simple as sending an ApplePay payment to a good friend in order to cover 1/2 of a case of newly released Bordeaux blend from a favorite Morgan Hill winery takes me about 5 tries over a 24hr time span. My life seems to be stuck in an endless love/hate loop.
This sort of shit just happens and not just to me, but to all of us. It's valauble to recognize the universal nature of it. All said and done, one minor every-day drama was managed in about 20 minutes, without shedding blood or tears. And yes, after the cleanup, I made sure the base of the lastest increment in my lifetime counter of broken-glass incidents was set safely into the trash, pointing down.
And there was that whole "Omen" scene with the priest and the rolling truck filled with stacked panes of glass. When my ex-wife and I rented the duplex on Cartlon Ave I expressed my hesitations about standing too close to the large glass street-facing picture window out of fear that the non-safety glass in place would prove fatal with just the wrong angle of stumble or fall. And yet, I could (and did) lean my full-body weight up against the observation tower windows at the top of the World Trade Center just two months before they came crashing down.
Oh, and of course, when this all just happened, when I knocked the glass to the ground, yeah, I was barefoot.
I stood at the sink, hands resting on the counter as I glanced back at the fan-shaped splay of glass, freshly broken down to the finest dust-sized grains of sand, and I signed. It's a work day and I was working. I was just getting some coffee while mentally composing a response to a text I had just received regarding my son being at my house at the time, outside of his custodial time with her (I'll save that for another blog) when this all happened, and the big pause-button in the sky turned red.
My son had just left and this poorly placed glass incident was all his fault. Sorta. My gut wanted to go there out of irritation and frustration that my routine insistence that glasses not be set in the sink, for the same reason, failed to also instill a consideration of the risks that accompany it's placement at the edge of a counter. Silly me. I guess for me, with my phobia and/or experienced insight, think it should be as inherently obvious as not striking a match while standing next to a stack of crates labeled "Acme Explosives Inc.". I wished he was still there because I wanted to blame it on him, instead of me, but I stopped myself. Because it wasn't in the sink, and it's placement was, although close to the edge, still on the dish drainer I was standing too close to from the get go.
It's hard sometimes to put a gut-reaction on hold. I muttered and mumbled profanities as I cautiously and carefully navigated my way out of that glass-filled region, but with a freshly made resignation to just roll with this. I pulled out the trash and started carefully looking for sparkling bits and pieces reflecting against the kitchen lights above. I worked my way carefully through most of it until I could safely retrieve a broom from the adjacent room, only to discover, while returning with said broom, that I had been gracefully spared the skin-piercing impact of an upward pointing shard along the path I'd just walked. I had overlooked during my cleanup pass #1, and could have easily just put my full weight on it. Jesus, I really hate broken glass.
I swept, swept again, vacuumed, corner and edge vacuumed, under the fridge vacuumed, and all-nooks-and-crannies vaccumed too. Then, I checked the dog's water bowl and dish. It was well out of expected range but, you know, just in case. It's the dog.
I love drinking from glass but I hate everything to do with broken glass. I love the taste of burnt-to-a-crisp hash-browns but despise how it all gets into the steel wool when cleaning out the cast iron pan. I love the sound of live music but hate the crowds that typically require navigating around. I love when technology "just works" and find it infuriating when something as simple as sending an ApplePay payment to a good friend in order to cover 1/2 of a case of newly released Bordeaux blend from a favorite Morgan Hill winery takes me about 5 tries over a 24hr time span. My life seems to be stuck in an endless love/hate loop.
This sort of shit just happens and not just to me, but to all of us. It's valauble to recognize the universal nature of it. All said and done, one minor every-day drama was managed in about 20 minutes, without shedding blood or tears. And yes, after the cleanup, I made sure the base of the lastest increment in my lifetime counter of broken-glass incidents was set safely into the trash, pointing down.