I simply cannot deal with responding to certain work-related emails before I have had breakfast and coffee. So, second mission of the day: Breakfast. (First mission was hill repeats.)

Coffee is brewing happily in the pot and I’m cheered that I remembered both grounds AND water this time. It’s not as easy as you’d think. I’ve got a pink grapefruit I’ve been hanging onto for a while, waiting to try out this grapefruit brûlée thing I saw on Pinterest. I cut it in half and damn, but it looks beautiful. I almost decide to just eat as is, then and there. It is so pretty. No, I think. Better try the broiling. It’s supposed to be so great. So I do.

Photo Credit: Epicurious

The grapefruit is under the broiler, where I check on it every now and then to let it achieve its desired level of carmelization. It’s starting to look good. I can’t wait to try it. Meanwhile, two eggs are gently bobbing along in a pot of boiling water. I’m soft boiling them, like Claire showed me a while back. I can finally stand eggs again, a couple of weeks after Whole30’s month-long eggstravaganza.

The grapefruit is done. The two halves look Pinterest-picture-perfect on my plate. I decide to try a bite while waiting on the egg timer to ring, so I dig in. Except. Oh. I don’t have a grapefruit spoon. This isn’t going to work. I get a paring knife and try to cut around the segments, like you can do. The grapefruit is boiling hot, but I manage it carefully, going once around the circumference and then in between each segment. I try again. No.

What I have in front of me, see, isn’t really a grapefruit anymore. It’s a bowl, made of grapefruit peel, filled with boiling hot grapefruit juice and some clumps of pulp. It’s inedible. It may taste great, but I literally am not able to eat it unless I want to slurp hot grapefruit soup out of my spoon.

I should have known. Trying to recreate Pinterest recipes is never more than a fool’s errand. At least I have soft-boiled eggs that’ll be ready in, oh, approximately NOW seconds. The timer rings. I toss the grapefruit catastrophe in the sink to deal with later, ignoring the explosion of boiling hot juice and pulp that blasts the entire kitchen when the fruit whomps softly against the side of the sink. My eggs are done. I’ve got to move fast. An extra few seconds in the boiling water may ruin them.

I put a bowl in the sink and run cold water into it, carefully removing one of the eggs from the pot of hot water with some tongs and promptly dropping it and the tongs into the sink. The egg cracks against the side of the cold-water bowl, its perfectly soft yolk dripping wetly out into the mess of grapefruit pulp and down the drain.

At this point, why not panic? I’ve already found two ways to ruin my breakfast. All hope may as well be lost. But no. Breakfast can be saved: there’s one egg left in the pot. The pot of boiling water. I’ve got to get it out before it overcooks. So I reach in and — NOT WITH YOUR HAND, DUMBASS.

So I reach into the sink and grab the tongs and save the egg. Which turns out to be perfectly cooked. And there is coffee ready, too. I may need a lot of it.