hot sauce...

i came home from volleyball practice today feeling like i hadn't eaten in a week.  last season, because we had a low number on the team, i would have to step in at practice and play to run the 6 on 6 drills we need to imitate game-like circumstances.  but this year, because we have 15 solid athletes, i have become the most amazing ball-tossing drill-facilitator you've ever seen.   i do a lot of standing and watching...i toss a ball from time to time...it's pretty amazing.  but today, my services were needed on the court and so i ran the set on my side of the net.  

no problem...i'm in decent shape...not decent "volleyball shape" mind you (being in shape and being in "volleyball shape" are two very different things, but that's another story for another blog)...but i could run around without feeling like i was going to die and actually put the ball where it needed to be most of the time.  but by the time practice was over i was soaked through....saturated in my own sweat. because of this year's budget cuts, the air in the gym is not turned on over the weekends.  so that means on any given saturday, in one gym there are three teams running around playing volleyball.  this roughly equates to 45 sweaty kids and one stand-in coach contributing their body heat to the already stifling conditions.  

i was sweaty and gross and starving.  i had eaten a bagel that morning, but had not anticipated playing volleyball for an hour and a half.  if i do anything that requires more energy than sitting in front of my computer, i need protein....lots of protein.  i burned through my bagel before the girls had even set up the net.  i was running on fumes by the time i had finished practice and hurried home to cook myself lunch.

if i'd had a 9 oz filet in my fridge, i'd have eaten that raw, but im broke so i ate the poor man's protein...eggs.  as i was finishing them up, i poured some hot sauce over top while they were still in the pan.  the salsa had been in the fridge and was cold...nothing puts a damper on having breakfast for lunch like cold salsa making hot eggs lukewarm.  so i thought i'd heat it up.  but as i lifted the pan to slide my salsa laden eggs onto the plate some of the sauce dripped off the top of the egg, slid onto the frying pan surface, and immediately shot into my eye.  i popped off some four letter words as the spicy projectile liquid singed my cornea and immediately rushed over to the sink to flush it out.  it burned something fierce and i wondered if my vision would finally be impaired...by hot sauce of all things. if it was, would i get to wear an eye patch?

the best part of this entire scenario was that my mom was 15 feet away, so engrossed in whatever she was doing on the computer that she never noticed that pace  picante had become airborne and was searing my retina.  i could be blinded right now and she'd have been reading her emails.