Back at school for the 2nd time in 7 weeks.... its been amazing, every single second of it. Rabbi Osdoba's Halacha (Jewish Law) Class is especially enlightening, particularly in light of what we are doing now - the laws of Muktze.

After having endured endless questions from the class starting with "but what if..." and "what about if", I have, on more than one occasion, fought the urge to get up and yell at my esteemed classmates "SO its muktze! SO don't touch it! SO would it kill you to leave it alone for a few hours until Shabbos gets out?!" No, I really don't care about what your intention was in respect of using that expensive china before it shattered into a million pieces on Shabbos and your subsequent dilemma of whether its muktze because you may have the urge to create mosaic art out of the beshattered bits. (Is beshattered even a word?)

To add insult to injury, I discovered today that I may have a phobia of blades. I have always been afraid of those "In-Sink- Erator" things (you know, that slicing mechanism that some sinks are fitted with in order to cut up garbage thats thrown into the sink, like peels etc - very common here but I believed banned in Singapore), because I always imagine hands and fingers getting stuck down there while the switch gets flipped on. It genuinely frightens me, even though we never had one of those in our house, so much so that whenever I hear that switched getting flipped on (my aunt in LA has this THING in her sink) my hair literally stands on edge the entire time its on and I feel slightly nauseas. Images of blood, minced tissue and broken bones run through my mind. I am not joking.

Today, however, I discovered that the phobia appears to be in respect of blades in general, because I was afraid to operate the new coffee grinder I purchased after I saw the blades. (I have never owned a food processor or a grinder prior to today). I was literally frozen in fear as I held the mechanism in my hands as it did its thing (such is the nature of hand-held grinders. It didn't help that the instructions said "hold the blender tightly with both hands"). I was so convinced that the thing would malfunction, suddenly breaking open, blades popping out and spinning all over the place... uhhh well you can imagine the rest... just thinking about it gives me the heeby jeebies. It was a full 10 minutes before my heart rate returned to normal after that (not exaggerating).

So this is my question : am I the only one with such a phobia? Is it just silliness on my part? Am I making In-Sink- Erators out of half-inch blades?