The Story of The Hour-long Salad

(GWEN – WARNING! Potential bird call alert!)

It isn’t a pretty story…but one that must be told.

Yesterday Pete brought me a half-dozen cukes he saw on the discount produce rack of the grocery store. I do love cucumbers! And, because my favorite way to eat them is as “boats” filled with chicken salad, I decided I’d just peel and cube them and mix them with some chicken and mayo. Besides, I had 6 large cans of chicken in the cupboard to use up.

So as I washed the cukes I noticed that there were little spots of white fuzz forming already, and decided to spritz them with vinegar/water before peeling, just to be safe. Then I peeled – because I’m not a fan of skin on fruits and veggies – 4 of the cucumbers. To scrape out the seeds I use a melon baller, but after wasting some minutes looking for it I decided on the grapefruit spoon instead.

Because of the arthritis in my neck which is curving forward more and more as time goes on I was advised by a former doctor to not do things which involve hanging my head forward…plus I can’t stand long due to decades of damage to my spine from said arthritis…so I pulled up a stool, sat so my head was just above counter height, and got to work peeling and cutting off the ends, then carrying my flexible cutting mat to the trash can to scrape it, then moving the vacuum cleaner away from its spot against the wall next to the trash can so I could (painfully) bend down to pick up the end-piece of cucumber that had missed the hole, then realizing that Maisie is shedding horribly right now and we hadn’t vacuumed that spot in a few days, then gagging while I threw away the wad of dog hair stuck to my hand with the cucumber end, then shaking off my hand and going to wash it again…

I got the cukes seeded with the grapefruit spoon and the cutting mat dumped into the trash can without further incident. Cubed them, opened 2 cans of chicken, drained, and dumped them into the bowl, looked in the fridge for my big jar of mayo but couldn’t find it so I assumed I’d forgotten it was already used up – forgetting such things is far from an unusual occurrence – got one out of the cupboard and dumped some in, stirred it up, and then decided to clean out the fridge because there was nary a spot to put the bowl.

Dragging my stool to the fridge, I opened the door and the first thing I saw was an egg carton. It was lightweight – one egg. After debating with myself whether it was even worth it, I saved the egg and tossed the carton. The next thing was a plastic “basket” of mushrooms, containing only 2 mushrooms. So I saved the mushrooms and tossed the basket. Though these freed up quite a bit of space, it wasn’t enough. Next I started removing everything from the middle shelf, where I wanted to put my salad. Throwing away a couple more things I created the space I needed but decided since I was there anyway I might as well do the rest. The top shelf just needed a little tidying, making space next to the open jar of salsa for the OTHER open jar of salsa that had been on the middle shelf. The bottom shelf is the cheese shelf – yes, we do have that much cheese! Taking everything off of that shelf I found the open-but-barely-used big jar of mayo. Now that had to go on the 2nd shelf with the new open-but-barely-used big jar of mayo, which took enough space that I could no longer fit the salad. Frustrated but not defeated, I started sliding the containers around to create space and, too late, watched the egg roll out and splat on the carpet…and cleaning that sure did take a lot of time! (Yeah, that’s what I said, too!)

In the end I have a non-cheese item (olives) on the cheese shelf which is really bothering me, but my salad is now on the 2nd shelf of the fridge. An hour after I decided I’d like some cucumber chicken salad…

The End.

4 thoughts on “The Story of The Hour-long Salad

  1. “The End” is the best part of that story – brings relief!! So sorry for your hassle, but, as we recently talked about, in the grand scheme of things, it is small and ya just gotta LOL.
    So thankful we had that modeled and learned to do just that. I feel bad for people whose undies are always in a bunch. There’s no resolution to a non-monumental circumstance and it was never that big a deal, really. But they suffer.
    Anyway, glad you survived the ordeal. <3

    1. It didn’t upset me or anything, it was a frustration but as soon as I sat down with my chicken and cucumber salad sandwich on keto bread I was over it. When I realized how long it had taken to do such a simple thing I figured I’d blog about it anyway :). That really makes a good salad, you should try it sometime! But yes, there’s no point in bunching undies over stuff like that, it creates stress, which causes all kinds of health issues, and makes you walk funny too!
      Hope you’re feeling better, I wanted to call you a couple of times but figured you’d be sleeping, then I thought of texting, then just didn’t hahaha! LYB

  2. I agree with Gwen, let the small stuff go even though in your case there where some big jars and a lot of cleaning…..no need in raising the blood pressure…..just deal and move on to the good stuff the food.lol…..:-)….Debbie

    1. Oy speaking of blood pressure last night I was doing some tidying up before bed and had something feel strange, I’m used to tachycardia and used to angina and used to getting short of breath and used to the feeling of hypertension when it gets high…so I checked, and my O2 was 94% (not too bad), my heart rate was 116bpm (usually in the 70s) and my BP was 73/49 – WHAT?!?!? It’s NEVER below 130/80ish…no wonder I felt so strange! But yeah, that was wierd…I didn’t lay down to go to sleep until my BP came back up and my heart rate came back down of course…and all’s been well today. I’m so used to the sensation from high BP but never felt low BP before! Anyway, I know that’s not what you meant…just still on my mind so it spilled out through my fingers LOL! ??❤️

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