looking down at my hands

There's a cut on my thumb and I don't know how it got there. This isn't so surprising though, since most of the time when I cut myself it's not even with a knife during cooking. I can be clumsy sometimes when it comes to my limbs. This new cut is probably from trying to break apart and eat lobster with my bare hands during our 4th of July celebration this past Sunday.

The very first cut I ever got in cooking school happened in the kitchen, but it was a paper cut. We had a practical exam that day and I was turning through the pages of my textbook to find the necessary recipe for our exam, and i sliced a finger.

I cut myself the other day in class with an actual knife, and I immediately apologized to my partner. "Hey man, sorry, I cut myself." I knew the cut wasn't very bad. It just meant two minutes of me not working while I washed the cut and put on a band-aid so as not to bleed on the food. Our head chef cut himself the other day while demonstrating a recipe, and he didn't even stop what he was doing. He sent someone else to bring him a band-aid and a rubber glove for his hand while he continued with the preparation.

Back to this past weekend - it felt uplifting to be surrounded by cooks who all decided to cook during their free time. I remember back in New York, waking up on a Saturday after having cooked every day that week, starting my morning relaxed and slow, and then all of a sudden becoming consumed by an idea or inspiration and deciding to cook! To my delight, this past weekend, I and my fellow cooks all seemed to feel this way - it was our free time, and we all used it to create something. And the result of our work was a 4th of July feast that lasted for hours.

In other news, I must confess that I spend a moment or two on the 4th of July fondly remembering past nostalgia and nonsense and debauchery by listening to Against Me, "You watched in awe at the red, white & blue on the 4th of July..." If nothing else, we had heart back then.

Also, I miss baseball. And even though the Mets suck, I miss them especially.