An Earthly Hell

My spouse and I went out to dinner tonight, kind of spur of the moment. Which is fine by me -- any time I don't have to cook, I'm all good, I don't even much care where we go or what we eat. When I have to go in to the kitchen and produce actual hot food, I sound like the castle guards in "The Wizard of Oz." O-o-h o-o-h, oh oh oh, dragging my feet, dread filling me even to my soul. I hate everything about it. The shopping (my gosh, I just bought _______, where'd it go?), the putting stuff away, the chopping, the thinking of something, the stirring, the cleaning up after, rinse, lather and repeat, over and over and over. I. Hate. It. And I realize I'm in the minority what with the Food Network and all the cooking shows out there. I realize it but I've had the cooking zest sucked right out of me by being married to the most picky man on the planet for a long, long time.

So we were talking on the way home, noticing how many people were standing outside this restaurant waiting to get it. And trust me, it wasn't a hip, trendy place. It's just run-of-the-mill Mexican food, semi-newly opened. Enchiladas, burritos, beans and rice, nothing out of the ordinary, but people were lining up, willing to wait upwards of 40 minutes. So I was musing about where these people'd come from, where had they eaten before? My husband pipes up with "That's what we should do, open a restaurant in Saddlebrooke." After I unwrapped my hands from his neck (Ha, only in my mind), I told him that when I die and if I get sent to Hell, that's what my hell will be -- a kitchen and I'll have to cook forever and ever and ever. He laughed but I was dead serious. That would be my idea of Hell: going to the store, lugging it in to the kitchen of Hell, unpacking it, chopping it up, frying it up, stewing it up, and then cleaning the kitchen, over and over. Maybe that's what Hell is: individually tailored to our most intensely disliked task. For me? Every time I have to go in the kitchen? I feel like I'm already there.