So here I am unwrapping the dreaded ‘glad-wrap’ plastic to seal over a plate of food that I will perhaps reheat the next day….and I’m in kind of a hurry. When you are cooking for just one, you’re always in a hurry to get your cooking done and with the minimum amount of energy expended. So ideally you want to prepare enough to get the most out of slaving over a frickin’ stove for just one person – that being me, myself and I. So instead of peeling 2 potatoes I’ll peel 4. Instead of boiling just 1 cup of vegetables, I’ll boil 2. Why? So I can reheat the additional tatoes and veges the next day and then I only have to cook the obligatory meat.
And see, da-da!…..
So that’s next day taken care of. Phew!
Do I care how reheated mashed potatoes taste the next day? You guessed right. I don’t give a frog’s fat arse.
Now it could be presumed that I have this process mastered or to put an Aussie spin on it – ‘down-pat’.
Well not quite.
Unrolling glad wrap to the specific length and cutting it in one piece often turns into what I call a ‘Broken Shoelace’ event.
Allow me to digress if you will. I always had the Charles Bukowski poem called The Shoelace lingering in mind and I wondered how I could incorporate it in my blog rather than just doing a cut and paste job and say ‘Oh here, read this great poem’. Over time I realised incidents analogous to Bukowski’s ‘Broken Shoelace’ occur to us all the time.
Excerpts from The Shoelace
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.so be careful
when you
bend over.
Now back to the glad wrap conundrum: Anyone that says that glad wrap is easy to unwrap and put to use is fibbing. What often takes place unless one has undertaken night-classes in glad-wrap handling is they will begin to strip the glad wrap clear of the roll and it will ordinarily cling to the the side of the roll like a baby to it’s mother’s breast. Now trying to back-track to find the point at which the separation of the main strip of plastic and the ‘son of a bitch’ piece occurred can take the better part of a day and you’ve wasted a good portion of the wrap unfurling so it co-joins anew. And even when you have it broken off to set as a cover, you must then ensure it does not fold back onto itself or just become a mesh of twisted plastic which if you’re a fumbling jack-arse like me can be a near impossible feat. This nightmare scenario also occurs with insane regularity when using blasted Sticky tape or when your toilet roll doesn’t have a split sleeve just after you’ve bought it or trying to split open the impenetrable ointment cylinder. And worst of all, you’re at your wits end, because as I stated at the start of this post, more often than not you are in a hurry to just to get the damn plastic off so you will not die from starvation or in the case of a toilet roll to wipe your backside.
Goddammit, Bukowski was right! Broken shoelaces (and lets not forget broken glad wrap, sticky tape, toilet rolls and ointment cylinders) can send a man to the madhouse.
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Sticky tape is the worst – especially when you’re holding pins in you mouth trying to hang your balls on the Christmas tree. Broken Shoelace is brilliant.
How do you juggle those 3 things Bruce?
‘Pins in your mouth’! The thought of that sends shivers down my spine. God knows what trouble I could end up in with Sticky tape and pins combined, not to mention tree sap.
This did bring a smile to my face 😊
But yes, i can well imagine it is not much fun cooking for one person. And yes, it are the small things – the broken shoe lace – that can send us to the mad house and also : the small daily stuff can take us to heaven and beyond.
All the best my friend with the sticky golden wrap 🤗
I have decided unwrapping glad wrap is an art form which warrants patience and good judgment. Two things I need to get better at. So it’s not all gloom and doom.
In reality, I like cooking most of the time even for just myself. But sometimes I couldn’t be bothered and I just want it out of the way. This was one of those occasions.
I like how you see the positives in the small stuff. One of my favourite quotes is from a movie ‘Vanilla Sky’ – ‘It’s the little things. There’s nothing bigger is there?’
Glad to hear that my friend. Without any doubt small and simple is beautiful and yes nothing bigger than that 😊
Yes! The older I get, the more I realise it’s the littler things that have the most profound effect
I totally agree. Big things start from small beginnings, they say.
Hey Tina! Thanks for chiming in.
As I mentioned in another comment I really like this quote: ‘It’s the little things. there’s nothing bigger is there?’
I used Glad Wrap for years until I discovered that Great Value plastic wrap is much easier to use.
I don’t think I’m familiar with it. I’ll be on the look-out for it. I’m glad you finally found a better alternative.
Great Value is Walmart’s generic brand. You’ll be able to tell right away how superior it is to Glad Wrap. The box has two cutters; use the lower one.
We don’t have Walmart here in Colombia. Two cutters! You’ve got to be happy with that. Thanks for popping in.
Oh YES I’ve been there before especially with Scotch Tape. I probably needed to go repent after the words that came out of me when trying to find the beginning…or is it the end? I have thrown a the wrap away before much to my wife’s displeasure…I said screw it and used tin foil.
Great great great post.
It was funny reading your experience with scotch tape and Glad wrap. I can relate to the ‘I’ll just use tin foil instead’ Haha. It’s also relieving to know by way of the feedback I am not the only one. In fact since I collated some of these little conundrums I realise I could probably dedicate a weekly segment about ‘Broken Shoelace’ incidents since they just seem to keep happening. Or is it I am becoming more clumsy!?
Your post brought it all back so clear. The aggravation…trying to dig the end part out and you end up cutting the layer below and screaming loudly.
Yes keep posting “Broken Shoelace” incidents.
A weakness I have is installing a windshield wiper on a car. I don’t know why but it baffles me at times and I end up placing them somewhere else and doing it the next day after I get time to get over my anger.
That was amusing reading about your weakness replacing wipers. It’s been so long since I owned a car, but I do recall a specific aggravation concerning that! Haha
If I run out of other things to write about I may need to lean on those incidents to overcome writer’s block.