The Expectation of Pressure?

My life could be encapsulated as a series of adventures, most of which are tragic, some of them borderline funny, some amazing.

I will let you- dear reader- decide for yourself which one does this incident classify as.

I have been experiencing a sleepy comatose state over the holidays, as my parents would testify. I for one am glad that I am sleeping so much, because as all my friends might know by now, good sleep is hard to come by. My father, however doesn’t share my enthusiasm for uninterrupted 16 hour sleep schedules.( My father doesn’t share my enthu for many things, and that will be another tale for another time). So today, ahead of the festivities to come, he decided to give the house a thorough cleaning. My father could have mild OCD, he certainly displays symptoms of it every day.

So you can imagine the trepidation with which I left the safe sanctuary of my bed and proceeded to do the task at hand.

Wiping down every surface twice, mopping, brooming took us around 4 hours in all (yes I counted). By the time we had put down our weapons , he was hungry and I was dizzy. I immediately proceeded to raid the fridge and found we had nothing edible for immediate consumption.

Well, I proceeded to do the next obvious thing – cook.

Now we had this morning’s leftover curry, so we decided to just make rice. I calmly measured it, washed it, plonked it in the cooker and waited happily for it to get done, (I found some peanuts to pig on, so you could say I was content).

Now the thing about pressure cookers is that you need its tiny weight to, well, induce pressure! Sadly it was an oft misplaced item in our house, much to my father’s consternation. I wasn’t able to find it, so began the hunt (not before using some choice curse words). Ten minutes later, after all the usual hideouts were eliminated, I began to wonder – it wasn’t found. My dad came in hopefully (expecting food) and saw me bending around looking for our missing person (as usual). With a resigned huff (this means he has given up hope on life) he decided to help me. Over the course of the next half hour we upturned the whole kitchen and found other lost items – but still no weight.

 A call to my mom (thank God she picked!) resulted in her immortal suggestion – “It must be right there! Look around properly, I don’t really know where else it could have gone!”

So finally, we decided to just boil the rice n had this watery gruel to go with our curry. My dad presumed it had gone out with all the garbage in the house. I thought it must have fallen out the window but couldn’t find it.

In the evening when my mom finally arrived, we told her how looking in every nook and cranny of the whole house confirmed that the whistle was not here. My mom took a few minutes to think, and then ran out to the garden where she would regularly put out the vegetable waste as compost. And behold! There was the weight! I immediately saw this as a good chance to get a reward, and made a sad face n said we hadn’t eaten much today, could we have some chocolate?

My mom gave me this box of chocolate I had my eyes on for like a whole week, (more on this disappointment later on) and went on to placate my irate father, who felt like he would die if he had to look for that infernal object again. (Yes, my folks are over dramatic and dysfunctional. Whose aren’t?)