Just one thing! (2nd February)

[randomling]

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing that you've accomplished in the past twenty-four hours. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you’re feeling accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange, or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Comments

[left_turns]

I moved a couple weeks ago to an older house. Everything about it is great so far except that my anxiety has decided I'm really afraid of the gas stove. Growing up, the only context I had for gas was OH MY GOD I SMELL GAS EVERYONE IS GOING TO EXPLODE AND/OR DIE! My knowledge of gas stoves up until now was that a)they have these things called pilot lights that sound scary because they involve setting explosive gas on fire and b)it's apparently not that hard to kill yourself with one whether you mean to or not, all you have to do is not notice you have a knob set wrong.

And the stove itself really freaked me out the first time I used it. The first time I went to heat a frozen pizza in the oven, I had the OH NO I SMELL GAS freakout every time I went near the oven, and it made a hissing noise while it was cooking that scared me. Then I opened the oven to check on the pizza and this big flame at the bottom of the oven flared up I suppose because of the air getting in, and after that I wasn't going to use the stove for anything at all ever again. Even my roommates who've lived here for a couple years now, I get nervous if they're cooking something, since what if this is the one time in a billion they get magical amnesia as to how the stove works and leave it on the "torrential gas leak" setting? I see the oven on and I kind of reflexively jump to turn it off because OH NO THE OVEN IS ON HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN ON GAS EVERYWHERE before I stop to think that maybe one of them is preheating the oven for something.

But yeah, yesterday I had to brown some beef for a stew I made, and I didn't even think about the fact that I was cooking on the gas range before I was halfway done. Even then, it was more still more of a "huh, this is going really fast. Ohhhh, right, I have heard that gas is better for cooking! I wonder if this is why?" thing than an OH NO GAS one. I needed to use the stove, so I used the stove.

I can't even say I CONQUERED THE STOVE, since I do still have the little anxiety voice in the back of my mind that's like "are you sure the stove is off? Really? What if it isn't? YOU'LL DIE, is what!" after people have been in the kitchen, but apparently if I need to I can cook on the stove that scares the crap out of me.

[untonuggan]

THAT IS AMAZING AND AWESOME AND GO YOU. *sends virtual high fives*

[left_turns]

Aw, thank you!

I'll have to get used to the stupid thing eventually; I can't eat out forever. And it's sort of silly anyway since the furnace that's probably gas powered too doesn't bother me at all. But... baby steps.

[omnipotent]

That's so wonderful. Honestly, it may just be me, but food cooked on a gas range tastes so much better than food on an electric range. I miss mine.

If it makes you feel any better, I still double-check my stove before I leave my apartment, and it's an electric range.

Keep it up!

[left_turns]

The funny thing is that the oven is apparently Freddy Krueger scary, but I kind of liked cooking on the stove. I put rice on later when the stew was almost done, and I spent so much time just looking at the gas flames and how they changed when I turned the temperature up and down. I'm probably lucky I didn't burn the rice or overcook it. I actually thought that the stove at my last apartment was gas when I first moved in (I grew up with glass-top stoves so I thought that was what electric stoves looked like, this one had the metal coil burners) and I was excited to have a gas stove because they cook better. It wasn't until I called my mom to ask how to cook on a gas stove and she was like "sweetie, you don't have a gas stove" that I even knew the difference.

Anxiety does weird things sometimes, I guess.