A few weeks ago, my partner and I were preparing to move. I was pushing, not carrying, boxes down the hallway, and one slipped off the other, and I fell. My thumb was extended from my hand and the result is a severely damaged ligament in my thumb on my dominant hand.

I’ve been in a cast/removeable splint since the accident on 6/20. Consequently, I have not been working. (It’s a good thing, it is off-season for Southern Arizona!) I’ve had three sets of x-rays, and a session in the MRI tube. (now dubbed the wooba-wooba machine).
What’s any of this got to do with cooking? Well, I can’t work, and I can’t really cook at home. Since we just moved and I’m injured, the new kitchen took over a week to put together, and I’m still not sure I like the way I’ve got it set up.

I’ve been chopping a few things, slicing open bagels, or trying to slice a cucumber, or chop food for my iguana. I’m doing fairly well, I think, for someone who seldom uses their right hand. It’s interesting that I saute with my right hand though, not my left. The knife feels awkward in my right hand, and it’s hard to remember to curl my fingers in my left so I don’t cut myself. But maybe through all of this, I’ll become an ambidextrous chef, able to use a knife with both hands. Wouldn’t that be grand!

I’m rather frustrated at this point. I miss work, I miss the camaraderie, the atmosphere, and cooking the sheer volume of food required in a banquet setting. I was switched to the pool kitchen for the summer, where I was back on line, and since it is a pool in Arizona, yeah, they get busy! And even though it’s hot, hard, ball busting work, I love it. And I miss it.

I don’t have a lot of friends who don’t work during the day, so I’m pretty isolated as well. The partner works during the day, and I have way too much alone time in my opinion! Trying to get some friends over here to help entertain me.

And most of my stuff is still in boxes. I’m not allowed to lift anything so they sit there and mock me. I’m a pretty active person, and gosh this is hard!

I need to take this oportunity to work on some recipes and work on the business plan a bit more. I haven’t been able to get motivated enough to do that, and we leave for Denver in a little over a week.

And maybe hurting the thumb is a lesson in patience, and how to emotionally distance myself from my job. I was starting to get a little too attached to the Hotel Kitchen.