Last night, my dinner exploded in my face.

I grilled yellow squash. I made two twice-baked potatoes – one for me and one for my partner. (LOL. I’m using this term as you recommended from my other story “Your Baby is a Bastard.”) I marinated chicken in italian dressing, and then I baked it.

Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep. Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep.

The timer on the stove went off. I grabbed the black oven mitts out of the cabinet under the sink, then I opened the oven door.

I cringed as the heat from the gut of the oven blew in my face. I pulled the pyrex pan, with chicken in it, out of the oven and placed it on the stove.

“Oh shoot! I forgot to make a vegetable,” I thought to myself. My partner doesn’t like “exotic” vegetables or plant that “crunches.” He prefers canned vegetables. So, I pulled out a small pot out of the lazy Susan corner cabinet. I poured a can of mixed vegetables into the pot like I was pouring Alpo into a dog bowl.

While I waited for the canned veggies to heat up, I made our plates and then put them on the counter, to the left of the stove. When I turned back towards the stove, I noticed that the “juice” in the pyrex pan was boiling.

“What the heck?” I thought to myself. (I didn’t really say heck. I swore.) I had never seen baked chicken juice boil before. At first I thought it was because the pan was still really hot. I turned the oven up to 400 degrees to brown it a little more at the end. Then I realized that I turned the wrong eye on for the Alpo veggies. I thought I turned the rear eye on, but I had turned the knob the front eye. I turned it up to medium.

I quickly put the black mitts back on and moved the glass pan over to an eye that was not on. I watched as the boiling gravy became simmering gravy, then still gravy. I took a sigh of relief.

CRASH!

I don’t know how to describe the xound of the explosion that took place. Right. Before. My Eyes.

The explosion sounded like the last and most important fight scene in an action movie where the bad guy gets pushed through glass window and falls to his death. Glass particles flew everywhere. They landed on the plates I made and put aside and into the other platters of squash, and in the Alpo veggies. Fortunately none landed on me.

My partner, who was just in the next room and on the phone yelled, “You good?!” to me and then immediately told his friend he would call him back. He rushed into the kitchen. He looked at the glass with wide eyes. He looked at me…and then looked at the glass again. He asked me if I was okay. I was. He picked up a broom and started sweeping. I sat down, still shocked and super disappointed. I wanted to cry a little bit.

Making this dinner was the one thing I had accomplished that day, besides changing diapers, cleaning throw-up, breastfeeding, playing and reading board books…all baby stuff. I hadn’t published a story all week. I hadn’t been successful in finding an intern to help me promote my blog and book. I didn’t exercise as much as I wanted to that day. Nor did I drink as much water that I wanted to. This dinner was the one thing I felt proud of that day. And then it blew up in my face.

We left the glass-sprinkled food on the counter, not ready to accept that we couldn’t eat this well-prepared food that we put the effort into going to the grocery store to get, using our money to buy and then taking the time to prepare. Okay…I admit that I did brush of one of the chicken legs and ate it. Then I Googled, “Can eating glass kill you?” (The answer is yes, if the glass chunks are big enough.)

My partner was kind enough to sweep the glass up from every corner of the kitchen floor, and clean the glass from the stove and counters. He even laughed as he did it, making me feel less bummed about the situation. 

The next night, I made the chicken again, using the same recipe…except I used a metal pan this time. It was delicious.

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