A mystery solved

My husband has been on my case lately to throw away my favorite spatula because the plastic is all nicked up. He's figuring I bought a cheap spatula and it's been disintegrating and the plastic is in all our food and is likely poisoning us. I haven't seen any plastic in the food, but I've told him I'll replace it as soon as I find a good one of the same size and shape. However, I'm not sure what a good one would be, because the only ones of that size and shape are the exact same one I already have, which indeed are cheap (Ikea), and I've been assuming would have the same disintegration problem as the one I already have. This discussion has been repeating itself for months.

This week, as those of you in Silicon Valley know, we've had our first frost. (Stay with me, I'll get to the spatula and all will become clear.) Of course, living in Silicon Valley, we're in denial about all things winter (witness the kids on the playground shivering in their shorts and light sweatshirts), so we don't actually have handy frost-scrapers stashed in the glove compartments of our cars. Yesterday I offered to give my son a ride partway to school, since I was going out anyway, and the frost on the windowshield had yet to melt. I'd have to scrape. I used to use a credit card, but wrecked a few credit cards that way, so I ran in the house to grab something that would do the job without scratching the window, and came out holding my favorite spatula. It worked brilliantly.

And about halfway through I looked at it and realized, this was not a crappy spatula after all, it was a perfectly good one. It was, however, not designed to be used as an ice scraper, as, I now remembered, I did all last winter.

I'm heading back to Ikea at the first available opportunity.