Yesterday, I was sitting in my living room trying to think of something to write. The room was quiet, the sun was at my back, and hot coffee on the coffee table. In a little while, my husband, Philip, came into the living room. He'd just finished eating breakfast. He asked if he could turn on the television. I didn't have a problem with that because he likes to watch the Sunday morning news shows and I was one paragraph away from being finished.
He turned on the television and found that all his news shows had been preempted for local Super Bowl coverage. So he started watching that.
He calls me a "tv Nazi" because he thinks I boss him around when he's watching tv; "turn it down, change the channel, you're not going to watch that, are you?" Stuff like that. So, Sunday morning, instead of telling him that the tv was blaring, I just got up and went to the kitchen.
I was almost finished with my writing for the day. In about ten minutes Philip came into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cabinets, while he was doing that huffing sound that my sister calls "air brakes." So I asked him "What are you looking for?"
"Where's the food processor?" he asked.
"It's in the cabinet over the coffee maker." I said. (eye shot - one foot from his head - second shelf- to the right - where he'd already looked).
He drug out the food processor and set it down among the dirty, breakfast dishes. Then he drug out these dirty, wet, cream colored, horseradish roots from a bucket of water he had sitting in the floor.
"Honey, aren't you going to clear some space to work?" I asked. As I moved my laptop away from the roots.
"It's such a mess in here, blah, blah blah...."
I closed my laptop, got up, and washed the dishes. I admit I was flinging a few spoons into the sink. I was just minutes from being finished and now I am stopping to do dishes - a few spoons got flung.
Here's the thing. We'd invited our son and daughter in law over to watch the Super Bowl, so tearing the kitchen apart to process horseradish seemed impractical.
I left the kitchen and was only gone for just a few minutes before Philip called me back in there. "I can't get this processor to work." I moved the handle around to the switch side, everything clicked into position and he was set to go.
Five minutes later he called me in to ask me why the liquid was running all over the counter. He had filled the Cuisinart full of roots and water/vinegar and hit the "go" button. And it went - all over the counter!
After cleaning everything up, twenty or thirty minutes passed. Philip came into the living room with tears streaming down his face. The horseradish fumes had started burning his eyes. I suggested he use some eye wash.
"I'll be alright" he said as he wiped his eyes with a towel.
The same thing happened about two more times and I suggested that it would be good if he had goggles to protect his eyes. He was a bit doubtful but I went to the garage and found his prescription goggles in a bucket in the wood shed.
He washed the goggles and started wearing them. It worked. He was able to finish processing the pile of horseradish roots - at least as long as the food processor held up. He did quiz me quite sternly as to whether we had any more sandwich bags.
"Yes, they're on top of the refrigerator." (One foot away from his head - 2 inches above eye level - in the bright blue box - to the left.)
At the end of the day, we had a life time supply of processed horseradish and a food processor with a burnt out motor. The second Cuisinart that Philip has demolished in our married life together.
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