Why would I tell you about how I wasn’t able to connect to the internet and how I was in my usual tizzy, and that’s only one of the difficulties yesterday that I would never want to tell you.

I am reminded of the movie Eastern Promises in which the Russian Mafia boss says: “You have to watch out for the little things. It’s the little things that can trip you up,” because I knew the difficulty with the internet was the little plug that fits into the computer.

The little plug was plumb worn out. No matter how I jiggled it, it wouldn’t work. To add to the damage, the message that the computer wasn’t connected would flash on my screen alternating back and forth with the message saying that that now I am connected.

It was like having strobe lights on my computer, and I couldn’t work with the flashing of one message after the other. Finally I covered up the flashing messages with a couple of envelopes. But under the envelopes, the strobe effect was still going on. I checked every now and then in the hopes that it had gone away.

Finally, Jacqueline’s husband Jeffrey came over and put on a new plug. As an extra safety precaution, to make sure nothing would short, he had me ask Lauren to disconnect my line which is networked to her computer. Since she didn’t exactly know what line was mine, she disconnected the whole thing.

So my plug was fixed, and Jeffrey left, but now neither Lauren nor I could connect to the internet. Lauren struggled with it for about half an hour and did fix it, and now everything computer-wise is just fine or I would not have been able to post this blog entry.

There is something else I don’t want to tell you. I certainly don’t want to tell you about my catastrophe, especially since I caused it. It is too terrible to tell. This was before Jeffrey came over.

For some unknown reason, the last batch of organic split mung dahl I bought from Everybody’s Whole Foods Store simply will not get tender. I can soak the beans for twenty-four hours and cook the dahl for an hour on top of the stove, and, still, it is not soft.

So I’ve taken to using my Presto Pressure Cooker. There isn’t anything that won’t get tender in a pressure cooker. As a side note, what would take an hour to cook in a regular pot on top of the stove takes only about fifteen minutes in a pressure cooker.

So yesterday afternoon, I popped the soaked split mung dahl beans into the pressure cooker and added more water, and closed the cover properly, and put that little rattling thing on top, and turned the heat up high.

If you have used a pressure cooker, you know that when that little thingy on top starts bouncing around, you have to lower the flame.

In case you don’t know, my kitchen and living room and dining area are open to each other. The floors are beautiful wood, and I do like an open plan, don’t you?

I always stay in the kitchen with the pressure cooker so I can lower the flame at just the right moment. But yesterday I was discombobulated because of my internet’s not working, and I went to check on the internet — for just a moment.

When I nonchalantly walked back into my living-room/dining area/kitchen, my feet suddenly slipped on the floor. There was a film of dahl liquid over everything with little dots of the dahl beans themselves splattered around, maybe just two or three dots of dahl for every foot of floor. The mess extended over a 12-foot radius.

There was moisture and bits of dahl all over my couch, the coffee table and everything on it, two baskets of clean laundry I had just taken off the line, two chairs, the TV, book shelves, windows, window sills, the open stairway, on the banister, on the walls, on my counters, on clean dishes, all over cupboard doors, most generously on the stove which had thick globs of dahl stuck to  it.

Someone hadn’t been watching the pressure cooker, and it exploded.

Tell me, how was your day?