Can't stand the heat, but trapped in the kitchen

I broke the crock pot today.

I was washing it and it never occurred to me that the hellishly heavy ceramic inner bit was removable. When I set it down, this inner part hit against the outside case and cracked all the way around. Case closed.

This is just the latest in my ongoing misadventures with appliances and home goods: you may recall previous episodes involving bowls and glass from here and here.

It's not that I'm stupid, per se, or even that the rules governing treatment of kitchen utensils are that confusing. As I've recently realized, my problems in this department seem to stem from the fact that, as a lifelong and semi-professional brokeass, I'm basically ignorant of the way modern and blissfully middle-class cooks operate.

Let me elaborate.

Fancy dishes that aren't supposed to go in the dishwasher or microwave -- I was not aware these existed. I mean, beyond the obvious things like plastic plates that I wouldn't put in the microwave, all our dishes seem to make it through being washed and nuked with relative ease. So of course I assume that any non-plastic dish is good to go.

Having to regulate the temperature of glass anything -- we don't have glass things and we don't really cook. So no, I was unaware of this horrible quirk. How has science not come up with glass that can regulate its own damn temperature?

Anything with actual gold trim that can't go in the dishwasher or microwave -- see #1. Oh, I tell a lie. We do have one coffee mug with a thin gold border. The gold's all scratched and chippy... because we put it in the dishwasher. I learned the no-microwave rule when the boring activity of heating up some tea in a school cup in a school microwave suddenly became a pyrotechnics display I could've sold tickets to.

On a similar note, let's talk about heating water. We've always done it one way, and one way only: in a cup, in the microwave. Yes, the cup gets hot, but why would you use stove energy to heat up six ounces of water to fill a teacup? A kettle always struck me as pretentious as hell, and the first time I saw my stepmom heat water in a Pyrex cup (again, in the microwave), I had no idea what was going on. Even now that I understand it, I still feel the urge to shout "Hot glass, oh damn!" every time I witness it.

I recently had a conversation about this with a friend -- let's call her "Student Friend", to distinguish her from "Employed Friend" and "Broke Friend".

ALB: "I never understood the rules about heating stuff up! I mean, glass: when it's hot you can't do anything with it or it'll shatter. What are you supposed to do with it til it's cool?! Will it blow up if I put it on the room-temp countertop?"

SF: "Well, normal people have a hot pad."

ALB (ignoring the 'normal people' jibe): "And the microwave: everything effs up in there. God forbid your cup have some metal parts on it because it starts shooting off sparks!"

SF: "You heat up water in the microwave, in a cup?!?"

ALB: "Well, yeah... doesn't everyone?"

SF: "I'm pretty sure only poor people do that."

  Clearly SF did not mean anything by invoking my white trash heritage in regards to my idiotic cooking practices, but on the other hand, there it is. The school of <insert last name here> cooking seems to rely heavily on recipes that can be prepared easily in either a mining town or moving wagon, so no, we're not fancy and no, we never own utensils so fussy they require a chemistry degree to operate.

If the recipe calls for a skillet, let me at it. If it wants hot water or anything made of glass, you can handle it yourself.