MOTHERLODE: CAN DO ATTITUDE
One corner of my kitchen is so cold, the lazy Susan could double as a fridge.
I’ve always had this brilliant idea of stuffing pieces of Styrofoam insulation back there to help it out. I’ve had this thought for 20 years. As always, the thinking and the doing are miles apart. Until now. Lazy Susans are terrifying places. The boys used to fling it around too hard and things would fly off the shelves, and when it finally wouldn’t spin anymore, somebody would go to the garage and get a hockey stick so we could fish all the fallen soldiers out.
Things would regularly get pushed toward the centre, until I’d end up holding a tin of tomato paste old enough to be in Grade 2.
The insulation experiment would also be a chance to finally do an archeological dig. First, I had to empty it. I have a habit of buying things in threes. If beans are on sale, I buy three cans. This is the way to three-can your way to 27 cans of beans. Nobody needs 27 cans of beans, unless you’re a food bank or a frat house having a farting competition. I am neither.
I grouped them on the counter, remembering the time Christopher once removed all the labels from everything in the lazy Susan when he was about four. We had Surprise Lunch for weeks.
I have a little headlamp thing I think is just fabulous. You put it on your head and have a light pointed exactly where you’re working. You look like an idiot, especially if you accidentally put it on the flash setting, but it’s very helpful.
I put it on to size up the task at hand, after I’d grouped four jars of peanut butter together — all opened.
My house is old and no walls are straight or square. I knew measuring the back of the cupboard would be required, but I hadn’t realized how hard it would be. Cleaning the shelves was easy enough, but to get to the back corner to get some measurements, I had to carefully insert myself into the whole cabinet. I eased my second shoulder in, like some breech baby that had changed its mind.
I bumped my head and scraped my knuckle, which started bleeding. The tape measure snapped like a rattlesnake when I dropped it, and I reflexively pulled back.
Both shoulders were jammed in the small opening. I realized how badly this could turn out if I was finally found, frozen and stuck in a lazy Susan, my lifeless legs sprawled on the floor, my hand dripping blood and a disco light strapped to my forehead.
I thought of the irony that I wouldn’t even have anything to eat before I died. I would expire only inches from enough beans and peanut butter to survive for weeks. I lamented that we’d hockey-sticked the back of the cupboard just before Christmas, and I was apt to only find a few old mouse turds if I felt around.
By now, one cat was walking around my legs, yowling. It wasn’t concern for my safety; we keep the cat food in the lazy Susan and I’m sure Mark just assumed this was a new way for me to serve dinner.
I carefully realigned my body so I could ease first one shoulder out, and then the other.
It only took 15 minutes to line the back of the cupboard, and it’s definitely warmer now. The fact the whole thing only turns halfway each way now is a minor detail.
I made Susan warmer, but I made her even lazier.