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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

You Da MAN!

That's what I said to my husband today when he looked at me and asked what we should "do" about our microwave.  A few hours earlier, when I tried to pop my afternoon popcorn, I heard the sound of a jet airplane revving up in the kitchen and caught the distinct whiff of, if not jet fuel, then definitely something burning. 

I asked him to take a look, fully expecting my prince to hone in on the problem before I could say, "Due to the faster evaporation of liquids at high altitude, microwave cooking may take less time than at sea level." But he couldn't figure out what was wrong, and instead turned to me and asked, "Well,what do you want to do about it?"

That's when, erasing a hundred years of hard-won suffragette-type victories, I said to him, "I don't know.  You're the man.  You're supposed to know what to do about appliance-like things."

It's true that I look to him for appliance fixes, oil changes and advice on practical, but ugly upgrades to the house (e.g., new gutters) and he looks to me for our social calendar (which is not a particularly busy job) and dinner.  But it seemed to me that this microwave conundrum involved a combination of these two gender roles.  And it didn't answer the question:  "How does one live without a microwave?"  I use it for everything from reheating my coffee five times in the morning, to sanitizing my sponges, to drying out the cats when they've tripped over my reheated coffee cup. 

We talked about getting a new microwave, because it probably wouldn't pay to fix this one.  Then we talked about whether it should be stainless steel or "almond."  We pondered whether it made sense to then replace the oven and the dishwasher with matching stainless steel because they might otherwise look "funny."  Pretty soon we had turned a $280 microwave replacement into an entire $50,000 kitchen remodel, complete with granite countertops, an industrial grade oven with six burners,100-bottle wine cooling system and a natural foods chef.

Unfortunately, after I noticed that the round glass plate that normally sits in the microwave was in the sink, waiting to be washed (it was that time of the year again) and replaced it, the jet engine noise and the burning smell abruptly ceased. 

The good news is that I fixed it myself.  The bad news is that we're not getting a new kitchen.

But come to dinner anyway.  I'll make you some popcorn.

4 comments:

  1. LMAO! You got skills, girl! I would have gone with the almond, since stainless steel shows all the fingerprints, that otherwise could blend in for the next time I clean the kitchen (been living here 3 years - still waiting for the right moment).

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  2. What were you doing up at 5:36 a.m. Karla - cleaning the kitchen?

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  3. OMG Joan, you just described my Dream Kitchen! I don't like to cook, but think I would really look HOT holding a plate of (store-bought and then taken out of the package and carefully placed on said plate AFTER warming up in microwave) chocolate chip cookies in one hand and a glass of wine (cooled from my wine-cooling system) in the other. Yawwwwzzzzaaa

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