Merry Christmas to Me

About a week before Christmas, I was at my parent's house and Mum carried in a huge box wrapped up all pretty, and told me that she wanted to give me my first present early. I ripped into the huge box and found the one gift that almost brought me to tears. It was a set of pots and pans.

When Jeffrey and I moved into Vairo, we both contributed a couple random pots and pans, none of them matching, none with lids. There really wasn't much storage space in that little apartment, so I decided that I would store all the pans in the little drawer under the oven. My Mum had always stored her pans under the stove, so I just assumed that this was the whole purpose of that little drawer. There was one small difference between Mum's stove, and my stove; hers was electric, mine was gas. I didn't think there was a difference between gas and electric, except that my burners turned blue when they were hot, and Mum's turned red. That's the only difference, right? Right?? So I put all of our pans in the little drawer, made a pizza, and then started to smell something burning. It wasn't the pizza, it smelled a little like plastic. I hunted all over the place for the source of the nasty, burning, plastic smell, but I couldn't find it. Next day, I make something else in the oven, the fire alarms go off, plastic smell is back, and I hunt around once more for the source. Still nothing. That night, I decided that I was going to make spaghetti for Jeffrey, so I open the stove drawer to find a good pan. None of them had handles. None of them. What the fuck? I yanked all the pans out of the drawer and started yelling for Jeffrey to get his butt in here and explain this handle-less pan phenomenon. I mean really, those pans had handles two days ago, and now they are completely gone. Not possible. Before he makes it to the kitchen, I actually take a look at the drawer. In big capital letters, a warning states: Do Not Store Anything In This Drawer, or something close to that. Hmm. I'm sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by a bunch of mismatched pans that don't have any handles (actually, one pan was left with a little nub), and Jeffrey walks in the kitchen looking very confused. "What did you do?" Uhh, I dunno. "You put them under the stove?" Uhh, I dunno. "That's where the flame is, Aimee!" Uhh, what flame? "It's a gas stove!! It cooks with fire!!" Why didn't you tell me? "Why the fuck would I have to tell you??" Doh.

Thankfully I was able to suck it up and not cry about the whole thing, although I felt like a total moron and Jeffrey teased me about it nonstop for a couple days, and then at least once every time we used a pan. For the past year, we've been using those handle-less pans (very carefully) and I'm reminded of my kitchen blunder at least twice a day. So when I opened that big box full of matching pans, I felt tears prick the back of my eyes, and probably would have completely lost it if my Mum hadn't been there to say, "It's just pans, Aimee." But they're so shiny, so new, so copper-bottomed, and each and every one has a handle!

Mum took me Christmas shopping today, even though I told her that I was thrilled with my new pans, and wouldn't need another Christmas present ever, unless those pans didn't live up to their lifetime warranty. I remember when I was in high school and she would take me shopping, I would walk out of American Eagle with $500 dollars worth of clothes, my arms full of bags from other stores and new shoes on my feet, and then cry like a spoiled brat when she wouldn't buy me the $200 Guess bag that would perfectly compliment it all. I was a total snot. Things have changed since then, I don't get new clothes often (none in the past year), and I can't imagine buying anything full price, or even on "first sale". Mum and I spent the whole day at the mall, her pointing out cute things that she knew I would like, me shaking my head and pointing out how overpriced things are these days. I picked out a few things, thanked her profusely, and hugged her twice before she left. $500 dollars worth of clothes seems like such a waste to me now, and I was more than grateful for my two pairs of Express jeans, found on sale.

I had a good Christmas.