Things I’ve learned the hard way

People learn in different ways, some ways are easier than others, but as long as you learn you’re good to go. Although, you’ll have less trouble if you watch and learn versus making mistakes to learn. I’m like most people in that I’ve learned lessons both ways. But as I’ve aged I’m starting to understand it’s less troublesome for me to learn by observing, rather than diving into troubled waters.

     Emotions are tricky and we all have an emotion that is troublesome. Anger and impatience are two that come to mind. Impatience is one emotion that drives anger but there are many triggers for anger. Many people blame others saying, “They made me angry, I can’t help it.” It’s not easy but we always have a choice, so it helps if you reject anger. Yes, it’s possible but difficult. Your anger may be spring loaded to go off, so take baby steps to fix it or any emotion that bothers you. 

     Worry is the emotion that bothers me. I worry about people and events that are usually out of my control. I know worry doesn’t solve the problem, but it still persist even though I push it away. It takes work to fix your emotions but it’s worth the time.

     Choices define your actions and reactions to every situation give you the opportunity to make a new a better choice. Use these opportunities to make a better life for yourself. “Just Saying . . .”

The Devious Tricks of a Kitchen Appliances

Appliances are a time saver, but they seem to have an evil side. Well, evil is a strong term, but definitely a devilish side. Two in particular come to mind.

Let’s start with the toaster. I’m calling it the leader of the devil

appliances. Our toaster has nine settings to achieve the desired color. That alone is troubling because it implies that our society is so particular about toast color that nine choices are needed. For me six is too dark and five is too light, but five and a half is just right. Hmm! That seems familiar. Well, anyway I’ll move on. 

The reality is my toaster knows what I like but frequently screws with

me to show who’s the boss. I say this sincerely because I’ve set the toaster at five and a half, my preferred setting but some days it comes our too dark and at other times too light. I make a mental note and recalculate my setting on my next piece, but when I hear the toaster pop on the second piece, no toast appears. What the hell? Somehow the toast has magically escaped and is lodged half way beyond the tongs. I used the necessary kitchen tools to extract my precious toast and find it’s the perfect color, but in the process of removal, it is in seventeen pieces. So, I’ve made croutons, but they’re hard to butter. Maybe I need to read the operation manual. 

Then I decide to run a toast test. I’ll toast at three settings one, four and a

half, then nine. At setting number one it merely makes the bread stale. The setting four and a half was too light in color. Toasting the bread at nine makes very dark toast but not black. So why is it that I sometimes I get blackened toast at setting five. It must one of life’s mysteries. Despite the issues with the devil influenced toaster, it’s still better than reaching into the oven to pull out a piece of toast. Singeing my arm hairs leaves a nasty aroma in the kitchen and it gives me an uneven tan.

The ice maker is another appliance we frequently use. Remember the ice

trays. Some had levers you could pull up to loosen the ice, others were plastic that could be twisted to release the ice. But the worse were the metal ones that sometimes required you to run hot water on the backside to get the ice out, which seemed counter productive. 

Now we have ice available to us on demand. No more pulling out an ice

tray only to find someone got there before you and left you with an empty tray. Bastard! The automatic ice dispenser is a godsend until it fails and it will eventually fail. We get ice cubes when we want crushed ice and vice versus, sometimes it pukes out ice like a waterfall and other times nothing. These are trivial problems in a world like ours, but everyday problems nevertheless. 

I didn’t include the coffee maker in this post because that would feel like

I was throwing a friend under the bus.

We have a button dependency, expecting everything we desire to appear

at the touch of a finger. So in a sense the malfunction of our appliances is like getting the middle finger from them. “Just Saying . . . .”