I cursed at the corn muffins

I'm making corn muffins for dinner. Jiffy corn muffins, to be exact. You don't want to know what I paid for a box of Jiffy, but that's okay because I know I am getting the real deal. I'm making the muffins to go with the Chef's salads we are having, which I selected because Hot.Season.Is.Here. My weather app says it "feels like 101*F". I don't believe them. It's more like 105. But anyway, it's that time of year where the AC takes forever to cool the house down (and can't really keep up even then) even with a fan going. 

The house was hot because I had gone grocery shopping- a task complicated by the taxis and the fact that you can't make a right turn so you have to make a couple lefts and sit in traffic and take the long route to the mall. Because everyone knows the best place for a grocery store is in the mall. But I digress, the house was already warm, and I needed to make my Jiffy corn muffins. And that means I needed the toaster oven, which makes the AC virtually undetectable in the kitchen area. 

So I was already a little bit warm when I had to check the muffins. The toaster only fits one 6 unit muffin tray at a time, and it was having a hard time getting a grip on the tray without gouging out a muffin. Getting things out of my toaster oven is tricky because the heating elements are so close to the food. One small slip and the bit of my hand that is sticking out of the oven mitt is sizzling against the hot rod at the top of the oven. The tray wasn't coming out, so in my infinite wisdom I thought I'd just take the rack out, with the tray in it. It was a good plan until the tray slid off the rack, upside down, in there back of the toaster. This is roughly when I said some unkind words to the corn muffins. And the toaster oven. 

There the muffins lay, under the tray, and directly on top of there lower heating element. Smoke immediately starts pouring out as my precious over priced Jiffy muffins burn and I start feebly attempting to retrieve the whole lot from the hot back of the toaster. It's also at this moment that I start counting, or maybe recounting, the price of life abroad. 50*F and a real oven were sounding quite appealing. I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention that part of the reason I am tired and was out grocery shopping and craving vegetables in the first place was that I just got back from a three night stay at my favorite tropical beach with some friends. 

Many times, I feel pretty spoiled that we get to do things like that, and in some ways, we are incredibly spoiled and blessed. But the beach also helps put the toaster oven in perspective. It helps balance the higher daily levels of stress from the systems we fail to understand (or use properly), the people we miss and foods (like cheese or cereal) that we have to ration. It counteracts the weddings and births and funerals we can't make it to. It balances out the time we spend physically paying all our bills in person and in cash, or the time spent on the logistics of simple tasks like trips to the pharmacy. It doesn't make the overseas life better or worse, it just makes it different, perhaps with better pros and tougher cons. It means that while the jade water and limestone cliffs are stunning, the corn muffins are also burned, and in both cases, life moves on.