pantryslut

1.

Despite my accident several weeks ago, where I opened up my finger on the blade of a ceramic slicer, I haven't seriously cut myself in the kitchen with a knife in many, many years.

Knock on wood.

What I have been doing lately is poking myself. See, for about ten years, my favorite knife lacked a tip. A careless roommate snapped it off in the sink soon after I moved to California. But as this was my very, very favorite knife, I didn't replace it, I just endured.

So I'd gotten used to cooking with a knife sans point. Then, I found a well-respected knife sharpening place that offered to put a point back on my knife for a very reasonable fee.

I hemmed. I hawed. I dithered. I fretted that it wouldn't be the same once the point was restored.

But, it would be better than replacing my knife, my hand-friend, even with the same model. I don't usually believe objects have souls, but I have an attachment to this knife, this particular knife, this singular knife.

I am happy to report that my knife is still my very favorite knife, only know restored to its former glory. With a very sharp point.

That I keep poking myself in the hand with.

Because my hands haven't re-learned yet how to move around a knife that actually has a usable point. There's metal there now instead of air. Sharp metal. Ouch.

I smile, though, every time I do it.

2.

G. was right. I concede. In public.

When we were touring the flat that we now lived in, the landlord pointed out a room that was being used as a bedroom, but was designed to be a dining room. Pretty built-ins along the wall and everything.

I immediately suggested it should become a library, and it has, in fact, become my office (plus G.'s weight bench).

G. looked at me at the time and said, "are you sure you don't want a dining room?"

I then launched into a long-standing rant about dining rooms and wasted space. Considering my lifestyle and my concerns and so forth, an office/library would be a better use of any dining-room-like space, by far. And in this, I am still right.

He said in reply, "But what about all the cooking you do?"

"I don't do enough cooking for other people to justify more than a four-person table," I said. "If we have more guests than that, we'll eat in the living room. I'm too casual for a dining room."

And then I probably launched into another long-standing rant about dinner parties and how I hate them. People over for dinner? Sure! Dinner parties? No!

However.

I have come to wish for a big table to put a lot of food on. And a room to hold it in. Not in our current space -- I love our current space as it is. But when and if we ever move, I think it might be time to consider a dining room, and a dining room table to go in it.

I think what would help would be a more open floor plan, so that it didn't feel so much like a separate, little-used room, but just an area where the table is. Ideal: like my parents' place now, where the living room flows into the dining room, which is next to the kitchen, and the traffic flows naturally through the whole area. Not ideal: like Steven's house, where the dining room is off to the side, and is hardly touched when a fancy sit-down dinner isn't happening.

Still, this means dining room, and dining room table, and this means G. was right. I do want a space like that to entertain guests in. So be it.