(Do you ever sit with headphones on listening to silence because you forgot to turn the music on?)
One of the first concessions people with children have to make is letting things go around the house. This usually begins to occur right around the time that the gravid female loses sight of her toes. Once the child is born, however, momma's nesting instinct may kick into overdrive and she becomes increasingly paranoid that her baby will pick up germs from surfaces and appliances that he isn't even old enough to use (like the floor), and desires to clean everything in sight. As there is rarely enough time available for sufficient disinfection, we do our cleaning in short, unplanned bursts.
Our diet reflects the mess that is our refrigerator. (The nutritional value of our meals has taken a steady downhill turn since our total income increased. Interesting correlation, that.)
While Rosco was taking a 15 minute nap earlier today I did a brief evaluation of the contents of our fridge. It contained dinner leftovers (gorditas, Paula Deen's "farmer's pork chops," a chicken crockpot thingie), drinks (including baby ones), condiments, 1 zucchini, some pathetic looking green onions and the usual refrigerator bric-a-brac (baking soda, etc.). I won't discuss with you the contents of our frezer, however if you're a fan of sodium you'd feel right at home standing in front of it.
Where are the vegetables? Where's all the lean protein ready to be cooked? At the store, probably. I don't have time to cook the meals I want to. Scratch that - I have the time, however that time happens to be in seven-minute increments when Rosco isn't screaming bloody murder from being ignored. That's not really long enough to be all gourmet frou-frou, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I threw out the rest of the leftovers since they'd been hanging out for more than 48 hours. Tomorrow I'll poke around the jars of unidentified jams and jellies and purge those, too. I think our biggest problem is that we've allowed our refrigerator to become a trash repository instead of a temporary storage device. I mean, after all, a refrigerator should be treated like a cooler with a plug. Once ingredients are taken out and cooked, they shouldn't be put back in leftover form. (Stop being a cheap-ass and just throw it out, Tiffany, you're not going to eat it.)
I don't exactly know what I'm making more room for, but once I finish my sort and purge tomorrow and bleach-clean all the shelves you'd better believe that non-essential items aren't going back in there. I want to lose this last twenty pounds soon, and changes need to be made. Goodbye half can of vanilla frosting. I'll miss ye.
Posted by Tiffany at January 2, 2007 09:23 PM | TrackBackDoes channel surfing and leaving the tv on the spanish channel count as the same thing? I'll look up and realize that I've been "watching" Spanish soaps for a couple of hours.
My wife did a major fridge purge this last weekend. It was scary, some of the things she pulled out of the deep, dark recesses way in the back!
Posted by: Erik at January 3, 2007 04:57 PMSounds like everyone's on a cleaning/purging kick. Must be the new year.
My fridge is generally pretty empty to begin with, so I don't do a whole lot of cleaning in there.
Posted by: Erica at January 4, 2007 01:49 PMLet your mom stay for a month. Soon, you'll need two firdges and meals will take over an hour to prepare. That'll boost the ol' nutritional value. Either that or replace all snacks with fruit in several prominently displayed bowls. That should counteract the decline from dinners of sandwich or order-in pizza three nights per week.
Posted by: Honza p at January 4, 2007 02:39 PMHell, if I let my mom stay for a month, not only will I have two fridges filled with food (that neither me nor the spouse is willing to touch because of the utter weirdness of the purchases), but I would be thisclose to gouging my eyes out with an icepick.
I've been trying to supplement the diet with fruit, but I've found that for each piece for fruit I eat, I eat a handful of potato chips. It's a balancing act, you see. :)
Posted by: Tiffany at January 5, 2007 10:12 AM