Wok's up?

When we remodeled our kitchen three years ago, I remember picking out the cabinets and planning the layout and being so freaking excited that we would have a refridgerator again. You know, after living with a college fridge for six months, it's the little things that excite you.

Because we had never unpacked the kitchen accoutrements after moving in, I had kind of forgotten what we had in all those boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling throughout the whole dining room. Plus the whole lying-flat-on-back-for-four-months-trying-to-keep-the-baby-in-me thing happened during that time, so I was a little distracted by that.

Once the cabinets were installed and the island was finished and we were able to start unpacking our stuff and moving it in, I realized we were in big, big trouble. We didn't have enough cabinet space for all the stuff. Somehow, 13 cabinets was not enough to pack it all in. We had to buy a sideboard for all our china and an additional armoire-type thing for the rest of the crap.

Even with all that, we still don't have enough room. With the recent conversion and remodeling, we lost a huge cabinet in the kitchen that used to hold our liquor and other appliances. But we gained some storage in the basement, so that's where the breadmaker and icecream maker now live. It made my stomach hurt to put them there, because I am one of those weird OCD people who like all "kitchen" things grouped together, you know, in the KITCHEN. Or at least the nearby dining room.

The food processor and slow cooker had taken up residence in the laundry closet, which is located off of the kitchen. I use those two things enough to need them nearby, but not enough to earn them cabinet space. Because, you see, I need a lot of that precious cabinet space for the wok.

This wok is the bane of Josh's existence and could very well be a contributing factor if he ever serves me with divorce papers. Right there next to "irreconcilable differences" it will say "wok storage." You see, I put this wok on our wedding registry, excited about the prospect of making stir-fry. I had never made stir-fry before, but damn it, I was going to now that we were married! Except, yeah, I never made any stir-fry. And I have yet to take it out of its very pretty, pretty wood storage box. Every few months when I whine about not having enough storage space, Josh threatens to get rid of the wok and I shriek and throw my body in front of the cabinet to shield it, and we all go back to our storage-challenged existence until the next time we have this chat.

So because I need to keep my wok within reach, my food processor sits on top of my stacked washer and dryer in the closet. Today, I was making homemade applesauce -- why yes, I am Betty Crocker, thank you for asking -- and I needed it. I am not a short woman, but at 5-foot 4-inches tall, I am not above needing a stepladder on occasion, either. As I reached above my head to grab the food processor, I realized I would have to move it around a piece of copper pipe that was in the way. (Yes, the laundry closet also contains our furnace. And water heater. I told you we were storage-challenged.)

As I moved it around the pipe, I realized it was much heavier than I remembered. It crashed to the ground, on my foot, narrowly missing MY FACE. Yes, the blade of the food processor was millimeters away from not only my nose, but also my eyeball. How I escaped death, or horrible disfigurement, I have no idea.

Josh ran upstairs thinking the termites had finally gotten the best of us and caused the collapse of the entire house, only to find me looking down at the various blades that could have caused my untimely death.

Do you think he was concerned for my welfare or even his own at that point, because he would have had to pretend I was still a MILF with a big jagged scar on my face? Nope. He took one look at me and as he headed back downstairs, said, "I told you that you should have gotten rid of that wok."