When multi tasking goes too far...
EDIT: I wrote this a month or so ago and have been too lazy to post it since. Behold the irony :)
So I’m having a busy week. Somehow I have timed a visit from my mother, a week of intensive classes on gender and violence for my masters as well as a workplace that is walking precariously on the line between order and chaos all to happen on the last five days. To say I’m stretched a bit thin is to say that the Earth is slightly sphere shaped.
You would think that all that activity would be enough to make me think I’m taking multitasking too far. No. Quite crazily, I think I am juggling things quite well. Yet there is one incident that has really shown how I have taken it too far. It involves a bath, a book and a jam donut.
In an effort to save time in relaxing (and we will leave the stupidity of trying to time save my relaxation requirements for another post) I decided to have a bath.
Baths are good. Hot hot water, plenty of bubbles, the essential oil of my choice and a bit of music and bliss is only a blink away. Yet in my limited time that afternoon in which I needed to read 6 acadmeic papers, spend time with my Mum as well as read a book I had just brought that I really wanted to get into, I decided to combine the book reading with the bath.
So far, this is not an unusal event as reading in the bath is as close to heaven as I’m going to get. Yet the amount that I perform this bit of multitasking lulled me into a false sense of security that I could add another task that needed (well, that I WANTED) to be done.
And that is the consumption of the yummiest, freshest jam donut that you would ever have the visceral pleasure of laying your eyes on. Picture it’s lightly golen skin, the liberal sprinkling of a cinnamon and sugar combination all over and the tantilising knowledge that inside was a jam just begging to be consumed and you’ll have some idea of the necessity of consuming this goodie ASAP.
The picture so far: Laying back in the bath, bubbles happily performing their destressing task and a book in my right hand. Then I reach over to the sink and get the jam donut and start to eat it. So far so good. I get even more confident in my ability to juggle all three tasks at once and start to concentrate more on the book I’m reading than in the task of eating. I’ve been eating for nearly 29 years now so I don’t count on me being able to fuck it up now.
Famous last thought as disaster strikes.
I take another bite and jam oozes out in a tidal wave of strawberry goodness which misses my mouth and lands on my chest. But thats alright isn’t it? I’m in a bath after all?
No, it’s not alright. This is because I’ve decided to MICROWAVE the donut beforehand so its a HOT jam donut.
And that hot jam is currently burning a new windpipe through my chest.
So now you can picture me thrashing around in the bath, hot jam burning my skin, nearly dropping my new book in the water whilst simultaneous trying not to yelp.
Because witnesses to my stupidity are something I could do without.
I manage to throw the book across the bathroom, away from the water and then wash the jam off to ease that burning feeling. The problem with this? I was using hot water from the bath.
Note to self, adding burning liquid to burning liquid is not ideal.
Eventually I managed to get cold water on me. My visions of lazily reading my book in the bath while enjoying my yummy jam donut was lying in shattered pieces around me. Instead of relaxing, I was highly stressed and ready to committ harikari.
Thus I realised that it is possible to take multitasking too far. Although thats not to say that I won’t try again, its just next time, the donut will remain room temperature.