Off is Important

I burned the soup. I couldn't believe it. I had never done something so completely irresponsible in my life. To be fair, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

For the last two weeks I have been doing nothing but playing catch-up. There were simply not enough hours in the day to get everything done that needed doing. While I was devoting my attention to school, my house was becoming a wreck. The dishes were piling up, I could not remember the last time I cleaned the cat box (gross, I know), and generally things that were usually put away found themselves all over he house and in odd places - and could never be found again when I needed them. Grant was helping as much as possible around the house, but his own work was keeping him busy with overtime nearly every night. Needless to say, when we both got home in the evenings, usually around 10, we were usually grumpy and tired but there were still things to get done around the house. It felt like we were in a never-ending cycle of stress.

I was up late working at the house one night this week and around 1am I got hungry. I was sick of making bags of popcorn, or even quickly assembled sandwiches, I wanted something that would make me feel not so much that I was eating for survival, but something that would make me stop and enjoy a study break. In my sleep-deprived brain, that meant soup.

I am a big fan of Bear Creek soup mixes. 8 cups of water and you are on your way to pretty delicious "instant" soup. Never being without at least a few packets of these tucked in my pantry, I grabbed a package of chicken noodle and my soup pot. I sat down on the couch while my soup cooked, it was already simmering in the pot...and I thought, just for a second, I would close my eyes and in just 5 short minutes I would have a bowl of yummy soup, maybe even watch an episode of Supernatural to recharge before finishing my reading....

....I woke up face down in the couch pillow at 5am.

I ran into the kitchen (which was surprisingly not filled with smoke) to find my soup had become a charred, crusty mass lining my lovely pot. I turned the burner Off and moved the pot into the sink. I stared into the belly of the beast, probably with drool drying up and turning white and flaky on my chin, at what had promised to be a lovely dinner. I could not believe that this just happened to me. Me! Miss Paranoid About Household Disasters. I lost my pot. I tried to salvage it by removing the burnt offering I had made to the late-night kitchen gods, but it was no use. My house still, nearly 4 days later, smells like burned, nastiness. And Grant has fully enjoyed admonishing/laughing at me for the irony of the situation.

I learned my lesson. Off is important, not only for the stove, but for me too.