Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Latest Fresh Not-Heaven

You know how, when you're running behind, everything that is routine suddenly becomes as difficult as herding cats and two-year-olds through a combination catnip field/candy store? That's what happened to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom earlier this week.

Was it not bad enough, Universe, that Mrs. HM was gifted with three new pupils in 10 days? Apparently, Universe, it was not. There she was, trying to put in transfer grades, record book numbers, update seating charts and the substitute folder, and get her lunch heated so as not to arrive late at the Semi Weekly Meeting of the Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tank and lose her seat. No good ever comes of some interloper picking Mrs. HM's seat!

The tone for tardy to lunch sounded before I even slipped my breast into the microwave. That's my new go-to lunch. Baked chicken breast on a Devil's Playground bakery roll. I grabbed a paper plate out of the bottom file cabinet drawer where we used to house The Pony's after school snacks, except he doesn't have snacks now, because he's so busy doing after school things. I took the breast off the roll, and laid it and the top and bottom bun on the paper plate to ride the microwave carousel. Let the record show that my microwave is circa 2001.

After heating for about 15 seconds, I take out the roll halves, lay them on top of the microwave, squirt some spicy brown mustard on the bottom, then cover it with the top for equal distribution. The breast continues go-rounding on the carousel. Well. On this day, I had just squirted the mustard and was reaching for the top of the roll when my hand got all spazzy and KNOCKED MY TOP OFF the microwave! It disappeared down behind the table, out of sight.

That's not a good thing. We don't have CUS to kick around anymore. If we did, I would not have worried, because I would have been confident that a heart/lung transplant on an immunocompromised patient could have taken place right there on the pristine antiseptic floor behind my microwave table with zero risk of complications from infectious agents. But we don't have CUS to kick around anymore.

I felt the hunger pangs scrabbling frantically in the pit of my stomach, grasping at the rugae, trying not to drop into the maelstrom of nutrient-deficient saliva-and-acid slurry churning at the exit door of the pyloric sphincter, so as not to be exiled to the duodenum. Hunger pangs do not want to see their bun go over the edge of Microwave Falls.

I could not even see back there! I leaned way over the humming microwave, most likely radiating my innards more than is advised by 9 out of 10 doctors surveyed. THERE IT WAS! The top of my roll! The lid to my sandwich!

Bad News: I dropped my bun.

Good News: it landed on a power cord.

Bad News: there were two spiders under the power cord.

Good News: one of them was dead.

Bad News: the other was alive, and headed for my bun.

Good News: I beat the spider.

Yes. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom picked up her top roll, dusted it off, and slapped it on the bottom roll for mustard, then pushed her breast in the middle.

You don't want to see Mrs. Hillbilly Mom hangry.