Frustration

 

I had a frustrating day yesterday. It really only takes two things to make it that way. First was my old Ford. I spent two hours on it installing new brackets for the driver's seat so I would have two more inches of legroom. After some skinned knuckles and sore knees, I realized I was doing it all wrong. Unless I wanted to end up in the back seat one day, I would have to do it all over again the correct way. But, fine. I locked up the garage and went back into the house to regroup. Tomorrow is another day, and I'm sure I'll get it done then.

Move ahead to suppertime. I was making ribs in the Instapot, one of my favorite easy dinners. (Instapot is a fancy ass pressure cooker.) First you make up a little rub for the ribs, then add the liquids to the Instapot, hit the right button, and in less than an hour you have delicious ribs. Unless....

Let's look at packaging and how it affects certain of us who are not as agile as we once were. Like those goddamned blister packs for pills. I hate them. It takes me ten minutes just to open one pill, and requires knives, scissors, and sometimes a saw. For the ribs, I needed some water, apple cider, and liquid smoke (A flavor additive) to put in the Instapot. Water and cider, simple. But the liquid smoke bottle was brand new and secured by a skin of plastic wrapped around the top. After five minutes of picking at, digging at, and cutting at the plastic, I got the top opened. Under the top is another plastic seal with a little tab you pull. I picked at it and pried it, but couldn't open it. So I got the trusty knife, the same one I use for those blister packs, and stabbed the bastard. My reward was liquid smoke, brown liquid smoke, gushing from the bottle and dousing everything on the counter. It took me nearly thirty minutes to clean up, and required me to shout out the word 'Fuck!!' at least three hundred times as I wiped it all up. The only good thing is that I didn't have to worry about the stuff that landed on the floor. Scout took care of that.