Day 729: Baking Soda Moments

Okay, everybody!  All together:

What’s a baking soda moment?

Even though I’m the writer here, I’m not sure of the answer. Maybe we can all figure it out as we go along (much like life in general, y’know?).

Let me start at the baking-soda beginning. Yesterday morning, at cardiac rehab (where we are gathering moments of data about my very unusual heart, for various cardiac cooks and bakers), I heard and saw Danise and Carla (who work there) singing, rapping, and dancing to the words “Baking Soda.” These momentary interruptions seemed to confuse and delight all the patients there.

My first “Baking Soda” moment was when I was weighing myself, before my work-out:

At first, when I heard them, I thought Danise and Carla were saying “Bacon,” not “Baking.”

As I started exercising, it became clear that “Baking Soda” was from a song Danise had heard, moments before she came into work.

Here’s Carla

having a baking soda moment as she says, “I’m going to kill Danise for putting ‘Baking Soda’ into my head!”

I’m not sure if I was having some baking soda moments when I responded to Carla that

• at my work as a clinical social worker, I’m mandated and obligated to report physical threats against people and
• I wasn’t at work.

As I’m looking at that baking-soda-moment photo of Carla above, I’m noticing cleaning-related products there, which remind me of my immediate associations with baking soda, as follows:

1. Baking soda can be used as a cleaning agent.
2. Baking soda gets rid of smells in refrigerators and elsewhere.
3. Baking soda is an essential ingredient in baking which makes baked goods rise.
4. Baking soda is a home remedy for various ailments.

I just checked Wikipedia, to see if my remembered baking soda moments, listed directly above, were correct. They are!   Wikipedia also lists Baking Soda’s appearances in film, including this one in the Marx Brother‘s Duck Soup:

In one scene, he receives a message from the battlefield that his general is reporting a gas attack, and Groucho tells his aide, “Tell him to take a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda and a half a glass of water.”

Is that a Baking Soda coincidence (with my first photo above), or what?

Wikipedia also lists additional uses for baking soda, as

1. A fire extinguisher
2. An acid AND a base neutralizer
3. A paint and corrosion remover, in a process called “sodablasting.” Isn’t that a blast?

Here’s Danise sodablasting “Baking Soda!”

 

In that last photo,  Danise is remembering a past baking soda moment, when somebody threw some gefilte fish at her, when she was working at a supermarket!

Maybe that’s actually a gefilte fish moment, which I should save for a future blog post.

Now that this post is half baked, I’ll tell you that yesterday’s baking soda moments yesterday also included Danise showing me

“The Bands That Make You Dance” and

that scar she got on her arm, falling off a child’s bike when she wasn’t a child. Danise said she was so embarrassed about that ..

• she ran away from some construction workers nearby who wanted to help her the day that happened and
• she tells people she got the scar from playing ball in flip flops.

That reminds me to take this very baking soda moment to point out that I didn’t take very many photos yesterday.

Why?

Holy Baking Soda! That’s my iPhone, which flip flopped from my hand, hitting the ground. I think that screen could use some baking soda moments, don’t you?

Actually, I told Danise and Carla yesterday I like the way the phone looks now, because:

• it’s easier to differentiate from other phones,
• it looks like it has cobwebs, reminding me of H. P. Lovecraft and other horror stories, and
• the phone has scars now, just like its owner.

Here are two more baking soda moments I captured yesterday:

That’s a photo I snapped while I was cleaning up after my workout at cardiac rehab. Although I wasn’t cleaning up with baking soda, I was

• removing the residue of heart-tracking electrode attachments (which I’ve done before, in a kashmillion baking soda moments throughout my life),
• thinking about how those illustrations are NOT representations of my very unusually formed and shaped heart,
• pondering the fact that I’ve promised Danise my next blog post will be titled “Baking Soda Moments,” and
•  realizing I have no clue how I’m going to write that post but I believe, in my heart, that I’ll find a way.

One more photo, from a baking soda moment at work:

Those are two suggested home remedies — as basic as baking soda —  for the common human ailment of people giving you unwanted advice.

Yesterday, I also seized  baking soda moments to try to choose a baking soda song for this post. Then, on my walk back to my car, after work, this tune played  on my phone:

I swear, baking soda readers, when I looked at my smashed-screen phone to find out the title of that Donald Fagen song (found here on YouTube), I thought it said “The New Bread.”

Is this post completely baked, yet?

Just a few more b.s. moments, with me:

• As the end of the year approaches, moments seem more ________.
• As the baker of your own life, how would you complete that sentence?

Did anything in this baking soda post get a rise out of you?

Thanks for reading!