Holy Crap!

Pain.

That's all there is- pain.

I went shopping today on my lunch break and only had about 15 minutes left as I headed back to the office so I stopped at this teriyaki place by Trader Joes.

I walked in and I was the only girl in there, besides the one behind the counter. Every table was filled with construction workers watching the television and talking about Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien (P.S. Jay- seriously? you retired from late night. That means you go home and spend some of that $800 million you have in the bank and let Conan find his groove.)I go up to the counter and ask for spicy chicken teriyaki. The girl asks how many stars, 1-3. As I'm used to up to 4 stars I'm thinking yeah right, it's not going to be very spicy..whatever. So I order 3 stars.

Oh. Dear. Lord.

I had no idea her English was so poor. She said 3 stars instead of what she truely meant to say which was "3-If-Chuck-Norris-And-Mr.-T-Had-A-Baby-And-It-Was-Hit-By-An-Astroid-Thereby-Becoming-Atomic-And-We-Blended-It-Up-Along-With-Some-Ghost-Chili-And-An-Old-Faces-Of-Death-Video-Stars".

To quote The Avett Brothers "And it spread." And it spread indeed. First my lips, then my tongue, down my throat and into my sinuses, thereby singeing my nose hairs and eyelashes with the lava-like mucus and tears that ran screaming from my insides. I'm pretty sure it was just mucus, though it could have been my internal organs liquified as they melted from the heat.

I, of course, was eating this pile of nuclear waste while Shannon was at lunch so got the great pleasure of answering the phone while suffering. I coughed on one call as a pepper flake dislodged from my teeth where it was trying to burn a hole through the bone but the most embarrassing by far was the call I answed after a particularly terrifying bite made it nearly impossible to talk. The caller laughed and asked if I was crying. It took me a few seconds before I could compose myself enough to say "no, just eating lunch."

And of course I had this much left, and being so frugally minded lately, couldn't throw away. But after sitting for even just 5 hours, it was too hot to actually make a decent dinner. I can honestly say its the first time I have ever used sour cream on teriyaki chicken. Curses for not drinking milk! I should have known that was the case though, when I opened the container I looked at it for a moment, full of dread and thinking "Eating this could possibly be the stupidest idea I've ever had." I barely ate even half of it, even with the sour cream addition (not too bad actually, much better than the hard boiled egg bread).

My stomach is killing me and hours later my lips still have a slight burning to them, but at least the lesson is learned. Won't be doing THAT again.