Saturday, February 23, 2013

The things that happen

When I'm overwhelmed I get more absent-minded. This week I was distracted. Busy. Andrew, who often helps me keep my head on, was very busy working and getting ready for a D&D weekend.
I tried to fit in a few household tasks on Thursday. One of those was making some stock with the carcass of Monday's roasted chicken.

I made the stock.

And then I went to work, made salad for 50 people, went to church, went home exhausted, and went to bed. Friday I was at work almost all day, except when I was running errands. I was gone last night. I went to work this morning, then to the grocery, then did laundry and worked on cleaning the upstairs.

I just decided to get started on the chili for tomorrow's lunch for the D&D players. Grabbed my stock pot from the back of the stove, where I assumed it was sitting clean, having completely forgotten that the stock ever existed.

Oh yes. It's still there.

Andrew usually makes sure all food is properly stowed before he goes to bed. But he probably assumed that the stockpot, sitting on the back of the stove with the lid on, was clean, just like I did today.

Now I need to get rid of wasted, yucky, beginning-to-smell stock before I can cook. This is why I need margin.

4 comments:

Susan said...

I hear ya. I've done the same thing with stock, or even fully made soup or chili. Right now I've got a turkey thawing in the garage (aka this time of year, my "walk-in refrigerator"). I am SO afraid I'll forget it and leave it to either freeze or rot. Andrew's asked me several times when we're eating it and what it's for. It's just for food, nothing special. But he better keep reminding me that it's there!!

Susan said...

By the way, I'm sorry you lost the stock. It stinks to take the time to do it and then not only lose it, but also have to clean up the mess.

Cheryl said...

I had one of those absent-minded goofs this week, too. While I was driving to a rehearsal I switched glasses (from my prescription readers to my bifocals) in the car. I put the readers (in their case) in my lap and forgot they were there. When I got out of the car they fell out on to the ground. When I couldn't find them in rehearsal I decided I must have left them at home. By the time I drove home, realized they weren't there and drove back to the rehearsal place to try to find them, they had been run over (soft case). Back to dimestore readers for me for the foreseeable future. :-(

mom said...

You might expect that, while the circumstances were different and my pot contained chili rather than stock, this brings to mind the recent episode when I burned a huge amount of chili, having absently turned the burner to "high," rather than "off." Oh, I tried to pick out all the black pieces and your Wicked assured me everything was fine. We even ate some for dinner. It was awful. Burned! Then I proceeded to freeze a gazillion containers of it
as if it would improve with time. Crazy. So when we return to Anderson, I will be defrosting containers, grinding chili, washing Rubbermaid, and trying to convince myself I'm not a total loser. I think we all do things like this, especially when we're too busy or have too much on our minds. My time constraints are not close to being as difficult as they once were, but I remember the suffocating feeling all too well. Unless we can get a handle on whatever is over-the-top for us, it can feel like we're being eaten alive. Go for that margin!
<3