Morning of Cream

We just figured out how to turn on the gas burners on our stove. There are six burners in all: two electric at north and south and four gas, one each at north east, south east, south west and north west. We'd just been using just the electric ones so far, but let me give you a popular scenario in our flat. You are making breakfast. You are frying eggs in one pan on the north electric burner. On the south burner, you are boiling water for Nescafe or tea. You have to boil water the water right now because the longer you put off drinking your tea or Nescafe, the better the chance that you will have to pee in the middle of your hour-and-a-half long bus ride. You also have to start the eggs immediately because if you wait too long to make breakfast you will surely miss the bus you meant to take (again). So, where will you toast your bread? In which pan on what burner? With only two burners, you can't toast your bread simultaneously. You have to do it before or afterwards, and thus, either your toast or your eggs will begin to cool while the other is readying. I probably don't have to tell you that neither is ideal.

Oh, and speaking of, we are running late for the bus again. I mean, I am mostly ready. Jessi is gargling salt water over the bathroom sink. She is sick, too many cigarettes, too much pollution. I have a big vat of Nescafe in a washed-out spaghetti-sauce jar on the table next to my elbow. The girls who I live with had never heard of this technique before, and I was like, "I mean, I guess my older sisters at Sarah Lawrence taught it to me." I would never in a million years be able to remember who the first sweater-wrapped bed-headed girl I saw stumble out of her house into Slonim Woods on a December morning and head bleary-eyed towards her class on the other side of Mead Way carrying tea in a jam jar, but thank you, thank you, wise one and the wise ones before you, for teaching me how to be able to fit two serving-sizes of coffee or tea into a free self-insulating portable container. As a professor in my department would say, apologetically-condescending, "You don't have to thank me for you telling you that. This is basic stuff." Goddddd.

We have four minutes to leave the house so I have to leave now.