Rules for Drinking Wine

By Charlotte Savage

    

  Sunday afternoon I dined at a restaurant with two friends.  Our designated driver suggested we share a bottle of wine.  As the waitress poured the wine my friend remembered that she was driving her new car and would drink sparingly, this left two of us to consume most of her share.

      When I returned home that evening I remembered that the cook at the senior center where I play cards on Mondays was on vacation and I thought to boil eggs for my lunch.  I placed eggs in a small pan with a lid.  I intended to stay in the kitchen until the water boiled and then I would turn the burner down to a simmer.  However, I had left my cell phone in the den and when it rang I ran to answer it.  By the time I hung up the phone I forgot all about the eggs and became interested in watching 60 minutes on the TV while stretched out on the couch.  I must have immediately fallen asleep.

       An hour later I woke up to a horrible acrid smell in the house.  I ran into the hall and all I could see was a wall of black smoke in the dining and living room.  Entering the kitchen I saw that the eggs had exploded all over the kitchen.  Strangely enough the lid to the pan was still in place!  Now how did that happen?

       I shut off the stove, flung open both my back and front doors and all of the windows in the house while turning on ceiling fans.  The smoke hadn’t reached the smoke detector down the end of the hall by my bedroom and computer room.   Knowing it would take time to clear the house of smoke I went into the computer room, shut the door and worked on my computer.   Unless you have done something this stupid before--you have no idea how badly burned eggs can smell.   By comparison the aroma that permeated my yard for five days after a skunk died under my porch would be my preference.

      By two in the morning I thought I could shut the doors and some of the windows. The pot I cooked the eggs in had cooled down and I placed it on my back porch to be reckoned with the following day. The house was so cold that I couldn’t get warm.  I turned on my heated mattress pad and climbed into bed fully dressed pulling the covers up over my head because airing the house had done little to rid the smell of Sulphur that still permeated everything.

     Today I have written a memo to myself that I plan to attach to the front of my refrigerator.   You might think it would say something like don’t drink wine on an empty stomach but you would be wrong.  Mine reads, “Never drink wine on the same day you plan to boil eggs.” 

©2015 Charlotte Savage all rights reserved.