Well Enough Alone

This morning I did it again. I screwed the top off the Molly McButter and dumped half the container in my oatmeal. It wasn't the first time and it isn't always Molly McButter on the oatmeal. Cinnamon on the toast, nutmeg on top of the eggnog, chili powder in the taco meat. I cannot learn. No, really. I can't. And you can see how long this has been going on by the eggnog reference.

Why did the spice companies have to make things better for me by replacing a screw top, with a shaker underneath, with a shaker under a flip top?

In theory, this ought to be great. Only one hand is required to do what used to take two, leaving the other hand free to stir, answer the phone, or knock the cat off the counter. Except, after all these years, I operate a spice bottle using motor memory skill—meaning my mind doesn't think about it. My body just does what it always has.

I am not against all change. Flip top cans, tuna in a pouch, and a ketchup bottle that stores upside down are all good things. I could write four pages about my love of Swiffer products—especially the mop. But I can't ruin my oatmeal without my brain coming into play with these things.

Now is the part where I am supposed to go all lofty and use this little inconvenience of life as some metaphor or some other hooey. I'm not gonna. I'm just going to be mad about spice bottles for a while. Sorry. That's all I've got in me today. You go ahead and think about somebody in a third word country who'd just be glad to have a bottle of nutmeg any way they could get it. That's fair. You're not wrong. But I'm not giving out fair today.

I was with some people recently who were livid over those new twisty light bulbs. I am mostly ambivalent about them. In fact, I kind of like them because they last a long time.

But I have had a gut load of those spice bottles.

Any change in the manufacturing world that's got you up in arms?