The Almonds: A Cautionary Tale

Our stupid (read: ancient and never cleaned) toaster oven has two settings: toast and kill. If you turn your back on it for three seconds, it will incinerate your food and then all the many fire alarms will go off and the baby will laugh, so that’s good, but the catt will hide and yes, that’s okay too, but it’s loud and plus, PLUS, then you don’t get to eat whatever you were cooking.

Last week what I was cooking was lunch which also happened to be the last two pieces of bread in the house with leftover refried beans smeared on them and cheese melted on top. The cheese was salvagable. I scooped it off with chips. Let us all thank God for chips and cheese, else my bones would rattle against one another in my clothing.

Two days ago my mom was here. In the time it took me to change a diaper (with 17,000 diapers under my belt it doesn’t take me very damn long these days) my tray of almonds, which I was toasting lightly and had JUST checked, given a shake and put back in the oven, had turned into so many charcoal almond briquettes. Cue the smoke, fire alarms, laughter, hiding, etc. I put the almonds outside on the concrete brick of the patio, muttering about how if I wanted a goddamn flame thrower in my kitchen I would have bought the KitchenAid Goddamn Flame Thrower but then editing the muttering because the people next door have children and I don’t get the impression these children hear swear words very often. (PLAYDATE!)

Then mom and I had coffee instead and went for a walk and bought some cookies and I forgot all about the almonds.

Yesterday, coming home from being out, I noticed the tray of almonds had been moved to atop the barbeque. Still, they were not sheltered by our patio roof, so were being rained upon. Hmmm, I thought. I should bring those in. But then I got to blowing my nose and at this end-of-the-cold stage, that can take a good 45 minutes, plus then Trombone decided to scream for the rest of the day so the almonds were forgotten.

This morning, after a long night of screaming and waking and thrashing and screaming and feeding and help I’m in a loop help help help

…I sat wearily on the couch staring at my coffee. Trombone was asleep, finally. 6:50 am. (Yes yesterday he got up at 7. No he has no discernable schedule, despite my best attempts.)

“The almonds,” I suddenly remembered.
“Wha?” SA said.
“Those damn almonds. They’re still out there.”
He kissed my forehead and patted my knee. “Yes, the almonds,” he said, in a way that I think I will find very comforting when I am 85 and yattering on about how the kids in the alley stole my Twizzlers and then I had to climb a tree but I only had one shoe and its laces were missing so I had to climb using just my hands and then a spider bit me.

Later in the day I had a look out the window and the almonds were now swimming in their toaster-oven tray in a rather deep pool of rainwater. A couple of leaves floated on the top. Pretty, I mumbled and made more coffee.

Tonight, when he came home, he carried the pan.
“I am bringing in your almonds,” he announced. “And also? It rained 2 inches today.”
“I don’t want them.”
“They’re not for you,” he explained patiently, “it’s so the strata council doesn’t make a motion that we have to pay extra fees because we leave almonds on our porch.”
“What about the squirrels?”
“They were BURNED!”
“The squirrels?”
“No, the damn almonds! Why would the squirrels want them?”
“Oh. To throw at the pigeons? They’re at war, you know.”

I think Trombone’s cold is over. He’s sleeping now. Tomorrow maybe I’ll try roasting almonds again.