Light Bulb Moment!

So my post yesterday got me to thinking. And I think I have realized something very important.

Accidental cleaning. Cleaning when you have no choice but to clean. I started to think about other parts of my life. Like, say, the car. We don't do any regular maintenance on the cars other than oil changes. We just wait until something happens and then we work on the car. Repair when you have no choice but to repair.

Or for me, going to the doctor. I don't have yearly physicals and I haven't had a womanly check up in 2 years. There are a lot of reasons but the overwhelming reason is that I wait until I am sick or have an urgent need. Wait until something feels bad and then go to the doctor. Go to the doctor when you have no choice but to go.

Yikes! It extends to other parts of my life to...working on myself when the pain gets too bad, to doing assignments at the last minute. Wow! I am amazed at this pattern. I am not sure what I am going to do about it but awareness is half the battle. Thanks for letting me ramble...

Don't cry over Spilled Apple Juice!

Saturday we were getting ready to go to our morning meeting when we had a small crisis at our house!

I was vacuuming (anyone who knows me should be proud) and turned the vacuum off for a second when I heard my husband calmly saying I needed to come out and help him because a bottle of juice had spilled. Well, if you do know me you probably know that I try not to buy a lot of plastic so it was a GLASS bottle and it didn't just spill--it SHATTERED! And of course being the thrifty shopper that I am, it wasn't a small bottle it was a HALF GALLON bottle! And on top of it all, it was apple juice-totally sticky and liquidy!!!

It was one of those times that I call accidental cleaning. We really needed to mop the floor in the kitchen and we really needed to pull out the fridge to clean under and behind it. I actually had been thinking about it recently--I hadn't done anything but I did think about it. So we had glass & juice everywhere. The kids were banished to get shoes on and to keep out of the kitchen. We went to work picking up pieces of glass, sopping up the juice--oh, and here's where the fun started--we ran out of paper towels! I had none. So we used old cheap napkins and then we used nice Vanity Fair dinner napkins. It was ridiculous, really.

Then he mopped...with my husband's industrial sized restaurant mop and bucket--a little overboard but typical male thing to do (and buy). This is my husband's motto "If more is good, a lot is better then too much is just enough! And it applies for mops also. After it dried we swept. Then we left. We had to take a break before the dreaded refrigerator!!!

So we pulled out the fridge--a little scary! Things had fallen down beside it so that was kind of gross. I guess that could have been my 27 Fling Boogie for Fly Lady! I didn't even try to clean the things up jut threw them away. We hadn't really missed them so why keep them. To be honest the fridge wasn't that bad. I cleaned under it and we vacuumed the dust off the coils so now we're good to go for a while:)

Accidental cleaning! The times when an accident occurs which prompts a thorough cleaning when you hadn't planned it but it needed to be done.

So even what appears to be a bad thing turns into a good thing--an actual blessing. I am grateful that the juice spilled because it got my husband and I to clean something that we had been putting off. Plus we did it together! Hooray! AND...the biggest miracle of all...NO YELLING!

Once again God is good and His plans for us are good even when it doesn't look like it.

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you,"declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Memories...

I grew up in upstate New York and people are always shocked when I say that I have never been to New York City. I don't know why I've never been...funny.

Anyway, we did spend a lot of time in Canada. My mother's siblings live around Toronto and my grandmother's family had a place north of Toronto that we traveled to during the Summer. lots of different memories come to mind. I couldn't share them all in this one post but maybe I can share a few.

My aunt was/is a wonderful cook and always had/has lots of good food around. In general, most of my memories of growing up are around food. I am always trying to capture the past by having the same types of food we had when I was a kid--ask my poor husband about what i make him eat:)

As I was saying, I love to eat at my Aunt's. One of my favorite things was a tomato sandwich--white bread, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise. So simple but incredible. And we used to eat them outside by the pool. That was fun. They had incredible pantries and freezers full of food. Another thing was a rice krispy treat ice cream sandwich. I think it was a peanut butter bar with strawberry ice cream--at least that's how I remember it. Once time she made homemade caramel pop corn. I could not stop eating it! At Christmas, she made all kinds of cookies. My mother's favorite was fruitcake cookies (yuck!). But my favorite was a meringue cookie! Yum! There were all kinds of family recipe cookies too. One Christmas, Aunt Sari made Seafood Newburg for dinner and we sat around the table eating dessert for what seemed like hours after. I was sick. I had to go lay down and I don't think I got up until the next morning.

One of the things we still laugh about and regularly wish we could still eat is cheesecake! And not your usual homemade cheesecake--thick, tall New York style with a layer of sour cream on top. There were other flavors too but I don't remember those. I do remember the berries that were plentiful on the table. But here's the interesting part...it was not for dessert...THE CHEESECAKE WAS FOR BREAKFAST!!! That's right, breakfast!!!! How awesome was that. I wouldn't dare eating that much dairy or that many calories at breakfast these days but the memory is there and it's great.

The last time I was at their house was for their oldest daughter's wedding. Now my Aunt did not prepare the food but I know she had a part in choosing it. And it was incredible...a seafood buffet. Seafood gets me every time. In Canada, a tradition is to have a wedding cake but it is a fruitcake type and it is cut up and wrapped in little pieces for the guests to take home. So because of that, at this wedding they also had a very large dessert table. It was amazing.

So there, now you know my slight obsession with food. And how it ties in with my memories. It's fun to think back. I just have to make sure that I am not living in the past and that I stay in the present and make my own memories with my kids and maybe a little bit of food...