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June 21, 2003
My Big Fat Freak Microwave
My microwave is driving me crazy and I’m pulling along the whole ship with me. Have you ever been driven insane by a common household appliance? It’s not pretty. A few weeks ago I was heating up some random thing – let’s say it was a muffin for Ivan – and I glanced at the display right before I turned to pour Ivan’s soymilk. It was counting down from 10 seconds, and I was doing that thing you do, you know, when you mentally count down knowing full well it will go off in 3…2…1…and then it didn’t go off. I turned around and it was at 4…and counting.
I thought I must have either counted too fast or had read the display wrong. I mean, a few measly seconds, right?
But the next day it happened again. And again. I thought that either I was a really bad counter or perhaps going blind. Or something. Five days after the muffin, I was fidgeting in front of said such appliance while waiting for the popcorn to finish. We had rented a movie, tucked the kids in bed and all that, and I was in charge of the popcorn while lazy John was sucking down soda on the couch. I hate being in charge of popcorn. I never know how long to cook it. “Wait until the popping slows down considerably…” What the hell does that mean? I mean, it’s popcorn. It’s supposed to pop a lot. Am I supposed to count the pops? Who can do that? We can put a man on the moon but we can’t make instructions for evenly popped popcorn? And why do people always say that man on the moon thing?
Anyway, I was watching the display and when it counted down from 3…2…1, I reached for the handle. Only it didn’t ding, didn’t stop, and the stupid popcorn bag was still rotating. The counter had magically, mysteriously, put back 5 seconds and was counting them down again.
I have to tell you, I screamed for John. I mean, what kind of crazy world do we live in when microwaves start randomly adding 5 seconds to cooking times? Does this microwave think it knows the precise time for heating chicken taquitos to their perfect temperature? Does it – it can’t, can it? – think it knows the precise time to pop popcorn? There are rules, and there are laws here, laws of physics and science and some other stuff that I don’t understand and microwaves are not supposed to add 5 seconds to anything, ever. Period. I mean, where would we all be if appliances started doing random things because they felt like it?
John didn’t understand the urgency, but came anyway, dragging his feet. Hello, we have a situation here. We need action! John thought I was crazy and probably hallucinating until I proved that the microwave was indeed, going off the deep end.
Eight tries, and a few blistered hot dogs later, I proved my theory: The microwave was crazy. Our conversation went something like this:
“It’s just five seconds.”
“Just 5 seconds? You wouldn’t say that to Bruce Bannister.”
“Who?”
“The guy who ran the first 4-minute mile.”
“That was Roger Bannister.”
“Whoever. You wouldn’t tell him “just 5 seconds.”
“This is a microwave. And Bruce Bannister was the Incredible Hulk.”
Ouch. It went like that. How could I convince John that the microwave was a menace to not only our family, but to society? I couldn’t. I still can’t. And the crazy thing just adds 5 seconds to any old thing, just to taunt me. It goes a week without doing it and then, just when I’m starting to hope, finally, for a life resplendent with normality, the five-second addition strikes again. Bastardo microwave makers! I curse the manufacturing lines you work on!
The only things crazier than my microwave are finals. And those, thank the deity of your choosing, were over last week. My Spanish final was insane – insane. We had to prepare four different scenarios and then, when our time came, choose one and perform it for ten minutes. It wasn’t as though we were allowed to script these things. We had to know the right words, the right vocabulary, but if there was any sign of memorization, our professor would stop us and start asking questions of her own, to make sure we knew the material.
What was the scenario we got? “Pretend one of you is the owner of a large manufacturing plant in Mexico that is dumping chemical waste into a nearby river and the other is an Environmental Agency Agent. Talk about the waste in the river, what it’s doing to the wildlife and people nearby, and try to come to some compromise about what to do in the future. Make it believable.”
It was the “make it believable” part that threw me off. I mean, wouldn’t the scenario have been more true to life if I called over my goons and had my partner sent to sleep with the fishes (and the evil chemical spills)? How true to life can it be if the worst we can say is, “you’re a bad, bad man, Senor Guillermo”? We can’t even curse! What is a foreign language without cursing? It’s a neutered language is what it is. It’s crap.
At least, it is when you have to pretend you’re an evil chemical-dumper and you can’t curse or threaten death to the environmental guy. I wanted to at least make a cardboard handgun or something, but my partner, ever the wuss, said no.
The rest of finals went fine. I had two take homes for my other classes, and spent most of the week drinking coffee and talking about how I was just getting down to business and would, at any moment, start typing away like a madwoman.
Seriously, the finals were hard. People always think take home exams are easier, but that’s a myth best laid to rest right here. They aren’t. Get this – professors, like, totally know that you, like, will have all this time to, like, work on it and stuff. So they, like, expect more.
With both of my take homes, I ended up typing more than 20 pages. And by the time Friday hit and I turned in the last one, I was relieved to be rid of my scholastic obligations for three months.
Chloe’s party was on Sunday. Also known as Father’s Day to the rest of America. Don’t ask me what I was thinking because I clearly was not. I think I thought it would be better to have her party after finals were over (her birthday was the 9th) and also, wouldn’t it be grand to have an extra day between the end of finals and the party? And who really celebrates Father’s Day anyway? Only everyone including us, except this year.
We still had a good show of friends at our favorite pizza joint – Pizza Caboose – and they were all too happy to sit and chat and eat and drink and be merry. I had a corner set aside for the kids to make picture frames to take home. I constructed frames from colored Popsicles sticks, glued magnetic strips on the back, and then bought colored feathers and foam cut-out pieces for them to decorate the frames with. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, but the frames could not compete with the “Jack-Ass”-like antics of Chloe and her friends putting Ivan into a rolling highchair and sending him flying down the one ramp in the restaurant.
Ivan has still got a half a week left of school, and then he’s off for a whopping 9 days. The Autism program in his district is going to a year-round calendar, though he’ll technically be attending the same number of days. Starting in July, he’ll go Mondays through Thursdays for four hours per day. He’ll be off the entire month of August, but will go back in early September. I like the new schedule because we won’t have to worry about him qualifying for the summer session, as we did last year. In the past, only kids who were at risk of losing significant abilities over the summer break were allowed into the summer session. He attended last year, but would have had to reapply every year.
And so, as summer finally gets under way I’ve got a mountain of things to finish. At home, I want to make some jam (Julia, don’t laugh, I still have those jelly jars I bought last year for the same thing), clean the house from top to bottom, and teach Chloe Spanish. Don’t laugh.
For school, I need to write and rewrite at least 4 stories for my graduate school applications. Though they are due in January, I know I won’t have time to get to much creative writing once school starts up again. I have to take my GREs – graduate school exams – and write out my personal statement essay. I loathe personal statement essays. It seems so…so…”interviewish”. I always feel like I’m lying to some extent, sugar-coating things, like in a job interview when the lame HR person asks you, “So, what is your worst quality,” and you respond with something like, “I care way too much about work. I’m really addicted to my work. I love working. And I just can’t help loving people!” Like that.
Side note – do the HR people that think up those asinine questions really think they are going to fool anyone? “You know, I have a lot of bad qualities, but if I had to narrow it down, I’d guess it would be a toss-up between shooting up heroin and being addicted to porn.” I mean, come on. Do they really think they are weeding out evildoers from their pristine ranks with these idiotic queries?
But I digress.
I have five schools I’m applying to – Portland State (my back up choice), the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, the University of Montana and, gulp, the University of Iowa. The last is considered one of the best Creative Writing programs in the country, and though I don’t really expect to get in, I’ve decided to go ahead and apply. It’s maddening to think about it all. I am also spending the summer researching each school and the area around it, getting on waiting lists for childcare and family housing, and, as if that weren’t enough, looking into each school district’s autism program.
I’m tired just thinking about it.
But you know what sounds good? A nice, hot, buttery bowl of microwave popcorn. I think I’m going to go have some popcorn and try to forget my microwave is colluding to overthrow the world.
Heather
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