Before I head out the door... I thought I'd leave some food for thought... here's a repeat of a post from Feb/07.
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This past summer, I had roughly a 40 hour period to
myself. Since having children, solitary time has been an endangered species. I’ve
gotten more of it as my lamblets have grown, but this past summer’s time was
unique. I was lakeside in Wisconsin,
was away from computers, to-do lists, any number of those normal distractions.
I had approx. 40 hours alone with my thoughts. Grizzled and the girls were up
with me, but were heading off to visit a friend’s place further north. Being
the chicken-shit I turn into after dark, I insisted he leave the dog. As I’ve
mentioned before, scary books and movies were a steady part of my entertainment
diet while growing up. It takes me about 2 seconds to imagine that small noise
I heard in the basement is really some scary creature come to life. Yes, I kept
the dog and probably slept with strategic lights on. I want to see the creature
that finally attacks me just so I have proof that all of this fear has been
valid!!!
But… aside from goblins and ghoulies and things
that go bump in the night, I had time to myself. I first plotted the best way
to spend this time. Do I pull out the sketchbook? Do I do nothing and laze in the
sun? I opted to finish the book and magazine I had brought with. I used to
blaze through magazines and books. I never had enough around. That was another
thing that went away after children. Losing myself in a book is now the
exception and not the rule. I miss it, but somehow, part of my brain keeps
telling me I needed to be present. It keeps telling me I have other things to do.
I can now forget I even started a book. I have a stack of books
beside my bed that have been started, but never finished. They are waiting, but
if enough time goes by, I’ll probably forget I ever started them in the first
place.
During the 40 hours, however, I was going to finish
my book and I did. I forgot how much reading you can do when you have ABSOLUTELY
NO OTHER DISTRACTIONS! I blew through the book, blew through the magazine and
had at least 38 hours left… I needed another book. I looked around the house to
see what other people had left. The selection was at an all-time low. I was
reduced to choosing between some sappy romance thingie and Ruth Reichl’s, “Comfort
Me With Apples”. I had read, “Tender to the Bone” and
had enjoyed it so this
seemed like a fine choice…. not too deep, not too sappy, not too, too.
Ruth is
funny and she intersperses her books with wonderful recipes so in I
went. I surfaced
about 5 hours later. Again, I had forgotten how fast you can read
something
when there are absolutely no other distractions. I had killed off the
last
piece of reading and was now left with my thoughts and instead of
thinking about the raptors that live behind the furnace, this is where
they took me.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had all been born with a
recipe card for our life? If you were meant to make a pot roast, you would have
been born with something that said, “Pot Roast” and a nice list of ingredients.
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you are the proud parents of what is to be a splendid pot
roast!” Just think of all of the struggles, questions, quandaries you would do
away with if you knew you were supposed to be a pot roast. If you had by chance
been born into a Chicken Marsala family and they were giving you grief for not
fitting the Chicken Marsala mold, you could merely flash them your recipe card
and say, “See! I’m a POT ROAST!” They might still want you to be a Chicken
Marsala, but arguing would be pointless.
I was then thinking, would this take too much mystery
out of life? Would this make life too mundane, too boring? What if someone is
born with a recipe card that says, “Tuna Casserole”, but they decide they are
going to be Sashimi? No one should be stopped from setting their sights high and
if they feel like becoming Sashimi, then why should they be hindered by having Tuna
Casserole on their card? And maybe after they’ve become the best Sashimi they
can, then maybe in their golden years, they can use the leftovers for tuna casserole...
Okay, so then I was thinking, what if we were just
born with our list of ingredients? That list of ingredients of course being our
talents. Most people think talents are obvious, but what I have come to see during
my brief time here on planet Earth is that most people aren’t sure of them. They
think they know what they have. They think, they pray that they have all the makings of a grand
chocolate cake, but what if they’re missing baking powder? What then??? Wouldn’t
it just be nice to know for sure before strolling out your *chocolate cake*
only to be told you made *brownies*? I’m thinking it would be nice to know. You
could always alter your recipes, you could always choose not to make anything,
but just enjoy others, we do have free will, but I’m still thinking, it would be
nice to know. It would be nice to have a clue, to have a ingredient card sent along
with you when you start this voyage called life.
But then maybe the best or most interesting or
funniest recipes come from flying by the seat of your pants and making it work
no matter what your ingredients. Look at Ritz Mock Apple Pie! It’s apple pie
sans apples! Maybe you just need to make
whatever, to go for the gusto and to heck with what the Chicken Marsala’s of
the world are saying. I’d hate to think I had gotten to the end of my life and
had played it safe, and even though I had made wonderful brownies, had then
looked in my grocery sack and saw a huge can of unopened baking powder.
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So... what would your recipe card say? Did you stick to it or have you decided to throw caution to the wind?
Be back in about a week... I'm leaving a sunken souffle... I hope to return as something less deflated. :)
I was sitting very close to him, still holding my basting brush and was noticing that he was really waxy looking. He also looked like he had been spray-painted. He was talking, I don't remember about what. He seemed nice enough, but he was rambling on when I noticed a twisted bit of Kleenex sticking out of one ear. I felt kind of embarrassed for him. He must have been wiping shaving cream from his ear and some tissue got stuck. He didn't look though like he ever needed to shave. He then turned his head and I saw that he had a twisted Kleenex in his other ear. He could hear what I was saying so I'm guessing he didn't have them in there to keep out noise.
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