This week's been a busy one here. We're still in the post-daylight-savings-time slump. Usually, my slump hits when I realize how early it gets dark. This year, "m too tired by 4 pm to even think about it, since the baby is waking at 4 am, shows no signs of abating, has been boycotting, alternately, her morning or afternoon nap. The baby's having a much rougher time adjusting, and let me tell you, she's bringing us all with her.
Four a.m. wakeups. Not good.
Here's my story for the week. I was quick-cleaning out a kitchen cabinet, you know, the spontaneous project that happens when you open a cabinet door, something tumbles out, and you realize (sleep-deprivation helps here) that life cannot go on unless you clean the mess right now, no mind that the eight year old is hungry and the baby's hungry, that cabinet must be cleaned. Well, as I sorted through cans and jars, triaging them into piles of toss, or return to clean cabinet, I realized something about myself.
Why is my cabinet filled with yummy things that are three years old?
That's right. Here's a jar of fig jam from the lovely cheese shop in Chestnut Hill. Here's a tin of interesting lamb rub, spices for meat, with a most excellent wrapper design on that tin, purchased several summers ago at the Fairway on Long Island, that now, unfortunately, is hard and packed together and probably not so good to use. Here's a fancy chocolate lollipop from our former next-door neighbor's Halloween party in 2004, that's three Halloweens back. Stuck among the mundanities of brown rice, and tuna fish, and chicken bouillon cubes are goodies that are now no good.
That's because they were deemed too special to use. Put away. Saved for a special day.
I know I'm not the only one to do this. I'm sure that we children who saved the red M & M's for last, carefully sorting out our colors into preferred order, and eating the less desired one first, all grow up to become adults who don't open the fig jam for three years. And yes, when I examined the top shelf of another cabinet (this, after getting some dinner to the children, and then, the children to bed, my obsessions run only so deep before responsibilities set in), there were more jars of nice jam. In the liquor cabinet was a terrific bottle of port, received for Christmas 2005, as well as some boxes of expensive candy whose origins are absolutely obscure, and thus, must be assumed to be older than is safe to eat.
I won't even tell you about the collection of intriguing hot sauces, nor about the trio of flavored oils in garlic, lemon and spice, nor about the coffee candy drops that I know my friend Amy sent when I was writing my book--that's several years back, for sure.
The pile of yummies that are now questionably edible has stopped me in my tracks. What a waste. What can be done differently?
Well, that jar of lavender honey that was on its way to the top "too special to use" shelf is now in the honey dispenser, ready for tea, ready for pleasure. The fig jam is in the frig, ready for a Tuesday toast breakfast that needs brightening. The chocolate lolly is in the trash, too bad, but the port, more happily, will be opened this Saturday night, if not before. The goodwill has spread past the kitchen walls, too. The Occitane body lotion given by a thoughtful friend after the baby was born has been pulled out of the bathroom cabinet to where I can see and use it before it turns to water. The light blue Eileen Fisher sweater I bought on sale three years ago in NY, yes, three years, I admit it, which I wore once for a TV appearance and then put away, because, you got it, I didn't want to ruin it, is front and center in my closet, ready to be donned for professional wear, baby drool on the way out the door beware.
Life has to be about using the good stuff, not waiting till it goes bad and has to be thrown away. It's like life with kids: about now, about what's happening this minute, this hour, today, trusting that what you need tomorrow will be there, that the good stuff isn't just the past, but the future too.
To anyone who, like me, has a secret stash of goodies, go for it, I say, and enjoy, now.
Four a.m. wakeups. Not good.
Here's my story for the week. I was quick-cleaning out a kitchen cabinet, you know, the spontaneous project that happens when you open a cabinet door, something tumbles out, and you realize (sleep-deprivation helps here) that life cannot go on unless you clean the mess right now, no mind that the eight year old is hungry and the baby's hungry, that cabinet must be cleaned. Well, as I sorted through cans and jars, triaging them into piles of toss, or return to clean cabinet, I realized something about myself.
Why is my cabinet filled with yummy things that are three years old?
That's right. Here's a jar of fig jam from the lovely cheese shop in Chestnut Hill. Here's a tin of interesting lamb rub, spices for meat, with a most excellent wrapper design on that tin, purchased several summers ago at the Fairway on Long Island, that now, unfortunately, is hard and packed together and probably not so good to use. Here's a fancy chocolate lollipop from our former next-door neighbor's Halloween party in 2004, that's three Halloweens back. Stuck among the mundanities of brown rice, and tuna fish, and chicken bouillon cubes are goodies that are now no good.
That's because they were deemed too special to use. Put away. Saved for a special day.
I know I'm not the only one to do this. I'm sure that we children who saved the red M & M's for last, carefully sorting out our colors into preferred order, and eating the less desired one first, all grow up to become adults who don't open the fig jam for three years. And yes, when I examined the top shelf of another cabinet (this, after getting some dinner to the children, and then, the children to bed, my obsessions run only so deep before responsibilities set in), there were more jars of nice jam. In the liquor cabinet was a terrific bottle of port, received for Christmas 2005, as well as some boxes of expensive candy whose origins are absolutely obscure, and thus, must be assumed to be older than is safe to eat.
I won't even tell you about the collection of intriguing hot sauces, nor about the trio of flavored oils in garlic, lemon and spice, nor about the coffee candy drops that I know my friend Amy sent when I was writing my book--that's several years back, for sure.
The pile of yummies that are now questionably edible has stopped me in my tracks. What a waste. What can be done differently?
Well, that jar of lavender honey that was on its way to the top "too special to use" shelf is now in the honey dispenser, ready for tea, ready for pleasure. The fig jam is in the frig, ready for a Tuesday toast breakfast that needs brightening. The chocolate lolly is in the trash, too bad, but the port, more happily, will be opened this Saturday night, if not before. The goodwill has spread past the kitchen walls, too. The Occitane body lotion given by a thoughtful friend after the baby was born has been pulled out of the bathroom cabinet to where I can see and use it before it turns to water. The light blue Eileen Fisher sweater I bought on sale three years ago in NY, yes, three years, I admit it, which I wore once for a TV appearance and then put away, because, you got it, I didn't want to ruin it, is front and center in my closet, ready to be donned for professional wear, baby drool on the way out the door beware.
Life has to be about using the good stuff, not waiting till it goes bad and has to be thrown away. It's like life with kids: about now, about what's happening this minute, this hour, today, trusting that what you need tomorrow will be there, that the good stuff isn't just the past, but the future too.
To anyone who, like me, has a secret stash of goodies, go for it, I say, and enjoy, now.