My toaster

Just as an aside...I found out a few days ago that polzter means "pole star," or what I know as the north star, in Dutch. Or so my Dutch friend Jeremy tells me. I can live with that...

I have a few odd bits of writing to do but decided to do this bit of odd writing instead. Besides odd writing, I'm supposed to be looking for a job but that sounds too sensible, doesn't it?

Today, I took apart my toaster oven. It became my toaster oven about four years ago when what was SK's also became mine. He has had it longer than we've been married and I believe this will be verified if we carbondate the crumbs in it. Which is why I decided to take it apart...to get to those crumbs. Unfortunately, many of them were stuck in this little space between the toaster's body and door. When I open the door, only part of that space can be reached, when I close the door, I can reach some other part of that space. But there's one more portion of that space that I can never reach with the paper-towel-covered screwdriver that I was using to slide around there.

So, I got my philips head screwdriver and started taking out screws...the pile of screws grew. Crazy spritzing of 409 cleaner all over the place. It was ugly....I used up close to 10 paper towel rectangles.

Then came the time to put it all together again. Just when I was putting all the bits into their places, one screw fell into that small space that could only be gotten to if I took the whole thing apart...again. When I opened it, that darn screw was nowhere to be seen. I shook it around...I heard it clink onto the floor. I'm on my hands and knees and thinking this is a really painful experience, more painful than the job interview I had a few days ago.

Perhaps facing the demons that plague me as a journalist won't be as bad as having to put together a Magic Chef toaster oven. These demons have names--pride, insecurity and anxiousness. I know "angels"--diligence, integrity and intellect--are combating the demons but that doesn't make it any easier. On good days, the angels get to sit on the demons. On bad days.....I fix toaster ovens.