I used to think that the ability to multitask was an art form. A special talent. A gift from God bestowed upon those adept at maximizing every waking moment of their day by tackling anything and everything all at once.
And for most of my increasingly busy life, I have been a master multitasker, and this skill has served me very well. Writing a college term paper in the midst of helping my roommate select the perfect outfit for a date while also chatting on AOL Instant Messenger with my sister back home? Easy peasy.
Throwing together a pot of vegetable soup, calling out spelling words, mopping the kitchen floor, administering Benadryl, and Googling “mysterious rashes kids get after playing with homemade slime,” all at once? Just another day.
Simultaneously getting a few miles in on the elliptical, making a grocery list on my phone with the help of Siri, catching up on current events via the TV news (on mute, with subtitles), while listening to a podcast called, “Let’s Slow Down”? No problem.
However, on a recent afternoon, my perfect track record of multitasking mastery came to a quite frightening (and rather odorous) halt.
Fueled with just enough caffeine to induce the exact amount of mania necessary to accomplish everything, I set out to tackle my to-do list for the last half of my day. My children had been at summer camp since morning, and I had a beautiful 30-minute window at home between an appointment and time to leave to pick them up.
I thought ahead to dinner. A cobb salad would be a simple thing to throw together, and if I went ahead and prepped a few ingredients, I’d have more time to spend with the kids when they got home from camp, as well as fold the growing mountain of laundry.
I chopped some lettuce, sliced a cucumber, tossed a handful of cherry tomatoes in the colander for a rinse, and put four eggs in a saucepan on the stove. I could set the burner on high, cover the eggs with a lid, and then turn them off as soon as they came to a boil, leaving them to come to a perfect hard-boiled consistency as the stovetop slowly cooled.
In the remaining 20 minutes before pick-up departure, I started another load of laundry, packed up three cabinets’ worth of dishes for an upcoming cabinet paint job, and decided to call a friend to break up the solitude of doing chores in an empty house.
As I folded T-shirts and we chatted, I glanced at the clock and realized I was getting dangerously close to being late for camp pick-up. I threw the makings of my salad in the fridge, grabbed my purse, and switched our phone call over to Bluetooth in my car. I drove 30 minutes from my house to Camp Rockfish in Parkton in heavy traffic, and waited 10 minutes in the pickup line as I wrapped up our conversation before my children hopped into the car.
On the drive home, I half-listened to my son and daughter enthusiastically recount tales of losing a shoe in the muck on the mud walk, winning an intense game of Gaga ball, and surviving a close call with a large wasp. While they spoke, I also did a mental run-through of what still needed to be done for dinner when we got home. Veggies? Check. Rotisserie chicken to top the salad? I should call my husband to remind him to pick one up on the way from work. Eggs? Eggs!!
My throat felt like it was beginning to close, and my stomach did a somersault. I was on under-construction Gillis Hill Road, a solid 20 minutes from my house, in stand-still, 5 o’clock traffic, when I realized that I had forgotten to turn the burner off. The burner that was still turned on the highest setting, occupied by a small saucepan containing four eggs and just enough water to cover them, with the lid still on.
No sooner had I come to this gut-wrenching conclusion than my phone began to ring and ding at the same time. A call from my husband, and an alert from our smoke detector, which is linked to my phone. I clicked on the blinking hazard-sign icon on my phone and read, “The air quality in your home is extremely low.”
Knowing that my husband had probably just received the same message, I switched over to his call and answered with, “I KNOW, I KNOW! Our house is BURNING TO THE GROUND! I left eggs boiling on the stove on high for ALMOST AN HOUR, and I am stuck in TRAFFIC!!!”
The chaos that ensued involved a frantic phone call from me to my neighbors, who, by divine intervention, happened to be at home; a simultaneous phone call from my husband to his best friend who also lives in our neighborhood, and our mutual request for whomever could get there first to assess the damage and call the fire department if needed.
I stayed on the phone with my neighbor while she and her husband rushed two doors down to our house. I did not consider it to be a good sign that as soon as she let me know she had successfully keyed in our code to unlock the door and gotten in, the next thing I heard was a lot of coughing and sputtering.
Through her labored breathing, my neighbor was able to give me a play-by-play of her heroic husband making his way through our smoke-filled house: He grabbed a dish towel, wrapped it around the scorching handle, and ran the pot that now contained nothing more than billowing smoke, eggshell remnants and black soot out our back door. At the same time, our friend — who happened to be out for a jog when he received the SOS call from my husband — sprinted around the corner and down our driveway.
I still do not know how that pot did not catch on fire, but I do know why it almost did. I was trying to do too much. Overloading myself with a laundry list of tasks that was clearly too lofty. Overachieving to the point of being distracted, frenzied and downright negligent. I had gone from efficient to careless.
That evening, after my husband and I rushed home to assess the damage, open every window and door, set up air purifiers, thank our friends profusely, and calm the hysteria of our daughter — who had taken to the far corner of our yard with a chip clip on her nose, proclaiming that our house was going to smell like “farts and eggs” forever — we threw in the proverbial towel.
We forgot the multitude of other things we had planned for the evening, sat on the front porch, and ate Chick-fil-A sandwiches straight out of the paper bags. No distractions, no interruptions, no multitasking. Just sitting, eating, talking and laughing together, in retrospect, at how we narrowly avoided an egg-stra big disaster.
It has been two months since my multitasking mishap. Our house is finally smelling somewhat normal. As far as I know, I still hold the world record for the hardest hard-boiled eggs of all time. I have learned to set an alarm on my phone anytime I start anything to boil. Our friend says he still has not run a faster mile than he did getting to our house that day, and probably never will.
My husband and I like to joke that while homemade salad almost leveled our home, takeout Chick-fil-A has never failed us. I have learned, the hard (boiled) way, to try my best to focus on one thing at a time, rather than 10, because while accomplishing a lot in a little time may seem great for the daily grind, slowing down is most definitely good for the soul.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Fall in Fayetteville” September 2025 e-edition here.