Monday, March 3, 2008

Toast

Toast is a mindset, a lifestyle, a worldview. I have it at least once a day. I like it with butter and I put varied toppings on it such as:

-honey
-cinnamon and sugar mix
-jam
-peanut butter and honey (rarely with just peanut butter)

Last Tuesday, Heather and I left for Portugal to attend a conference. That morning, our toaster stopped working. This is a major deal, since our kids like toast a lot and, uh, I do too, just a little bit—okay, a lot bit.

This morning I took the toaster off the counter to throw it away and paused to reflect on the many months we’d spent together. Yes, she was crummy and the numbers on her dials were faded, but I will miss her.

As I walked her to the rubbish bin outside, it occurred to me: “Heather gave up blogs and Facebook for Lent and I didn’t give up anything. Maybe this is God’s way of putting that right. Maybe God figured I needed to give up toast for Lent and this was God’s way of making it happen.”

I thought of laying hands on the toaster, anointing it with oil, and praying for the toaster, but I wondered if doing so would get me electrocuted, so I just accepted my short fast from toast as part of God’s plan. Oh well.

Goodbye for now, toast. I will miss you and hope you come again soon.

It’s a sad week in the Cady house, because the toaster is broken. Which wouldn’t be THAT big of a deal, except that we have a couple of large bills to pay this week so getting a new toaster is going to have to wait until at least next week. This makes Troy, who regularly says “I haven’t had any toast today” very sad. It also made office hours before staff meeting today kind of sad and pathetic because we almost always consume large amounts of toast.

We love our toast, that’s for sure. Troy is very exact when it comes to making toast, especially cinnamon toast (which we sometimes eat a whole platter of, with a pot of tea, for dinner on Sunday nights). The butter must be evenly spread to each edge so that the cinnamon & sugar mixture (please, no lectures about healthy foods) will stick to the toast the way it’s supposed to.

I like toast too, but Troy is the king. Quite often he will eat peanut butter and honey toast for dessert or for a light snack while we are watching a movie.

I hope that if you can make a piece of toast today, you won’t take that privilege for granted. Eat a piece or two for us.

3 comments:

Victoria said...

i just went to my ukrainian grandma's house this weekend and she gave us a loaf of Babka. Babka toast is like the golden toast in legends about toast. I'll eat some babka toast for you guys. I will.

Anonymous said...

This is the first time i have visited this blog of yours but i think i am going to like this one and come by often....missed seeing you last week.
Sophie

The O said...

Have you guys got an oven? Methinks you probably do. Well, go ahead and use it to toast your bread. It will certainly take some experimenting and getting used to, but it can work for you.

And don't think for one second that doing that will negate God's Lenten Requirement for Troy. It's certainly a sacrifice to have to make toast the Old Fashioned Way. Come to think of it, if you really want to go the way of asceticism, toast your bread over a lit candle. :-O