The Curse of the Two Tablespoons

Every couple, and every family, has its private words and catch-phrases.

For example, when my husband was little, he called the windshield wipers "whimper wipers". I love this name, so sometimes I call them that myself. Our son, when he first learned to talk, called hamburgers "hanga-bers" (hanga, like "kanga" as in "roo"). Some nights we still have "hanga-bers" for supper.

One of our longer phrases, and one that needs a little more explanation, is one I've been experiencing more than usual this week. My husband took a week of leave time, so he has been home, and that means he's been cooking. So our refrigerator has had a lot more large pots of soup (saurkraut soup and bigos) and various other things than I usually see when I open the door.

That phrase is "Aargh! The curse of the two tablespoons!"

You are afflicted by the Curse of the Two Tablespoons when you take something out of the refrigerator, let's say a gallon of milk, and start pouring it over your cereal.

As you get "enough" milk on your cereal, you realize there is only a little milk left, so little you'd feel silly putting the mostly-empty jug back. So you pour more milk into your bowl, until the bowl is brim-full and your cereal is swimming around in there, spluttering and saying, "Hey! Stop! Enough already!"

At this point, with no more room in the bowl, there is still milk in the jug. That's the Curse of the Two Tablespoons. A little too much to throw away, but a little too little to put back.

(We usually do put it back, but we tell whoever is handy, "I just got hit by the Curse of the Two Tablespoons on this milk," so they know there won't be enough for a mug of cocoa.)

The Curse can hit anything, but it especially hits leftovers: soup, where your bowl absolutely won't fit a drop more, but there it is, in the bottom of the Tupperware, a little dab of soup, about enough for the doll's tea set. Casseroles, where you took as much as you really wanted, and there they are, the two tablespoons, snickering in the casserole dish.

Knitting News

There is no knitting news. My husband took his leave time to match our son's vacation, so they've been playing card and computer games and hogging my computer. I've had a little head cold that gave me earaches in both ears at once and turned me down to about half speed. So I've been reading and looking across the room at the knitting.

Like putting the two tablespoons back instead of eating it when I don't really want that much, I have a policy on fiber arts that says if I don't really want to do it, I don't have to do it.

On the few occasions when I've had to do things on a deadline, and pushed through hours and days of doing it anyway, I have ended up not touching that particular fiber art for months. Years even.

For me, it works out much better if I work on a project while all other activities feel like interruptions to it. You might say the project mojo hangs around a lot more when I am not grabbing it around the neck in a strangle-hold.