I decided to get back in the kitchen on a more regular basis before they start making a fast food documentary about my household. It has seriously gotten pretty bad. I think the only items I've kept in the house since Thanksgiving are milk, cereal, Chips Ahoy's best, and yogurt. Everything else has been takeout.
I went on a stock up spree a week or so ago and outfitted my kitchen to feed an army. I was bound and determined to cook every night for 21 nights in a row, hopefully breaking my reliance on fast food. Bad habit out. Good habit in. Easy, peasy, right?
Tell that to my panic attack, woman-gone-crazy hysterics in front of my cutting board. Two minutes into chopping an onion, and I was bawling my eyes out (real tears, not onion-induced) and flapping my arms around wildly. About the time I had marched in and out of the kitchen for the tenth time trying to get myself together, the sirens started up. For Pete's sake, people. Is there no end to this? Jacob, twelve years old, is simply not equipped to deal with this. He looked up at me after the sirens stopped, and asked, "Are you ok if I go in the other room now?"
I know I sound like a drama queen. And I can be. But this crap in the kitchen is no exaggeration. I have never experienced anything like it. It is total body recall. Put me in front of my counter with a knife in my hand, and I am right back to that day, with a knock on my back door moments away.
But, I digress. Here's the story I meant to tell:
When I ran out of peppercorns the other day, I put on my big girl panties and drove over to the godforsaken Urbandale Family Fare. I spaced in front of the spice display for a couple of minutes, coming to with my gaze locked on the Ancho Chile Powder. If only I had just used the stupid stuff, instead of letting Cory walk to the the store to fetch regular Chili Powder, she would still be alive. Doesn't that just fricking blow your mind? She could be here, right now, in the other room trying on a new pair of tights or straightening her hair or waiting up for Tim to get home.
Just so you know, this guilt shit is like a boomerang. You think it's gone, and bam, there that damn thing is again. Every...fricking...time. It's tiresome.
When I am having a Garden Gnome sort of day, angry and irrational, nursing fantasies of doing bodily harm to the careless driver that ran my baby down, I blame said driver.
All the other days, I blame the driver, and quickly circle back to note Cory wouldn't have been on the stupid road in the first place if I hadn't let her walk to the store.
Or if I'd remembered Chili Powder that morning when I'd hit the store for dinner supplies.
Or if I'd drove myself to the store to buy the Chili Powder.
Or if I'd just caved and used the Ancho Chile Powder that I wasn't sure would taste the same.
Did my perfectionist side kill Cory? Did my laziness? Poor judgment in letting her walk in the heat?
There in the store, I looked up at the shiny glass bottle of crushed chiles, and thought...a split second decision. I just screwed up. I searched myself to see if I felt compassion or empathy for the driver who had obviously made a split second decision and screwed up herself. Did I feel bad for her?
My jaw tightened and I felt something twist hard and low in my chest.
That Thursday afternoon around four o'clock when I opened my cupboard, I wasn't knowingly taking my life or anyone else's in hand.
She did. That woman got behind the wheel, knowing- as we all do, each day- that she was doing just that. And then, she hit my girl anyway. She never braked. She somehow didn't see a human figure in broad daylight crossing the street near a shopping area well used by pedestrians daily: gas station, bus stop, bank, grocery, and all the folks who frequent them. Every day I see people crossing, some looking, some not bothering, trusting that traffic will stop for them. And they do.
Do I feel bad for her?
Nope.
I can't believe she still gets to drive.
I'm having a hell of a time cooking here, and I didn't kill anyone.
Technically.
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