Friday, September 8

When I said 'I'm a disaster,' I wasn't kidding

Remember how I told you that a good part of my day is spent laughing at my own ridiculousness? Today I did something so retarded that I am contractually bound to tell you about it.

The story technically starts last night, when I got home from the grocery at 1 in the morning, and started shoving cold stuff into the fridge with reckless abandon. I do this every time I go to the grocery, and unless Phil is standing there to remind me to remove the old crap, throw it away, and replace it with the new crap, I just skip that step and shove all the old crap to the back of the fridge and fuggedaboutit.

But last night I realized that if I didn't throw some old crap away, the new stuff wasn't going to fit. So I reached into the frigid depths and retrieved two old gallons of milk — one that expired four days ago and another that expired on July 27 — and chuckled to myself that the oldest gallon was still even in liquid form. Then, thinking ahead and trying to be shrewd, I decided to store the old gallons in the fridge for one more night instead of leaving them in the garbage can overnight, where they would no doubt stink up the place. My superior human brain figured that I could just pluck them out of the fridge the next day and take the trash out in one fell swoop. So I made room elsewhere and shoved the new milk to the back of the fridge so that as soon as I opened the fridge the next day, I'd see the old milk and remember to throw it out.

Such careful planning!

But you see where this is going, right?

So this morning I decide I'd like to have a bowl of Special K Red Berries, so I shuffle into the kitchen, get a bowl from the cabinet, open the new cereal box and shake flakes and freeze-fried strawberries into the bowl, and then open the fridge to get the milk. I could have grabbed the gallon that expired four days ago. Or the new half-gallon, had I reached further. But no. My hands were drawn like magnets to the milk that expired July 27 — the gallon that had a chunky little ring around its middle where the milk had sat and clotted ever so slightly on its surface.

And somehow my superior monkey brain didn't flinch as I screwed off the top of the nearly-empty container and dumped its disgusting contents onto my cereal. It's almost as if my body was conspiring to waste my money, since Special K Red Berries is something like $12 a box, which comes out to about a nickel per flake.

When I realized my mistake, I blurted a filthy word and laughed, kinda crazy-like, as I dumped out the entire bowl of barely damp cereal into the garbage.

Guess what's still sitting in my fridge.

Yeah, yeah — I'll get to it later.

2 Comments:

Blogger David Holt said...

Mmmm... Yogurt...

You know, I had you pegged as an adventurous, global-type person. As such, I figured you'd have tried it. After all, fermented yak milk is QUITE the delicacy over in Mongolia.

Besides, how dare you waste food when there are starving children in ____? (My grandmother was convinced that I owed starving Africans my own gluttony.)

Fri Sep 08, 07:28:00 PM  
Blogger phallicpen said...

That's where cottage cheese is made, you know. In your refrigerator.

Sat Sep 09, 12:34:00 AM  

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