Here I sit on 29 November 2011 in the midst of boxes that are to transfer my indoors from autumn to Christmas. I look around the room and make mental note of where every autumn piece of brick-a-brack is sitting; I know one will remain tucked into a corner until Easter! I found a wooden egg from Easter when I was setting out the fall stuff. This is how it goes. In July I will be startled to find an angel still trumpeting the birth of Jesus. At Thanksgiving I will find an Easter egg or two (wooden); and, yes, you might say I hid them myself. At Christmas there will be a remnant of summer or autumn and the cycle repeats.
I think of myself as a detail person. In my heart of hearts, I know it to be not so! I miss things. Every part of my life has been plagued with responsibility for detail and I miss the little things. Even this blog can amaze me with my inability to post without error. After proofing until I have sandpaper eyeballs, I post and there before my wondering eyes are typos, misspellings, odd punctuation, or unfinished thoughts.
Consistently, I repeat a conversation to Dave giving rich detail and fact. Before I put an end to my final sentence, he begins with questions I would not have thought to ask if I had used a note book and pen over a month of planning. I get the time, place, and cost correct. Dave soon proves that I left out how many are going with us, whether we meet ahead of time to have something to eat, how dressy or casual it is, and whose idea it was. I don’t know. I thought I had all “my stuff” together, but I missed something.
I once had my purse stolen from our motel room. When I was giving the police report, I happily told the officer the man who knocked on our door earlier in the evening (not necessarily the thief as he said he was looking for friends), looked like Farrah Fawcett’s brother. Sadly, the officer didn’t know who Farrah Fawcett was nor did he have any clue what her brother looked like. I saw Dave’s eyes and knew I had dropped details. We began looking at composite pictures. If you ever want your brain scrambled like this morning’s eggs, try putting a real face together using a composite book. It is a great deal like playing with Mr. Potato Head! I finally asked for paper and pencil (mine were in the purse I no longer had) and drew my own sketch! Ha! Stick that in your old detail pouch!
I once worked for a man who was even worse with details than me. One day I returned from lunch and took things out of my “in” basket to set priorities. I had worked for approximately half an hour when Mr. Boss came at me with purposeful stride. “Did you send that packet to Mr. Bigger Boss by courier? He doesn’t have it yet.” Confusion danced through my brain. “What packet? I’ve sorted my entire in basket and there was nothing there.” We stared at each other – not an uncommon occurrence for us. “I put it on your chair not wanting you to 'sit on it' (meaning: to not delay attending to it)." I rose slowly to my feet, and there, on my chair, was the packet. I had literally been sitting on it. Much later when we were both in a calmer frame of mind, I asked "Why my chair?" when I meticulously sorted my in basket every time I returned to my desk. He didn’t think I would notice it in my in basket!
I am organized. I love putting things together in efficient, time-saving, methods for future use. I always color coded my files. Each person I reported to I assigned a file tab color. When someone was pressuring me to find something because they were having a panic moment, I only had a particular color of tabs to look through rather than multiple drawers of folders. If I organize something for you, I expect you will use it and maintain it. Maintaining my own organization means I put things right where they go when I am finished with them. Maintaining your organization means I am picking up after you have been disorganized all over the place. Not my forte.
Details and my inability to tend them follow me into cooking, as well. Pot roast, pork and beef roasts tied together, roasted chicken or turkey, pot pie, soups and stews are my area of expertise. Pies, compotes, salads, and sauces I can handle. If we want something with true elegance, Dave puts on the chef hat and I stand back. He follows recipes to the letter, measures carefully, and performs tasks in proper order. If I put that much time and attention into the entrée, there will be no salad, no potatoes, no vegetable, and no beverage. If Dave is being Super Chef, we get all those things timed to perfection, finished and served at once. His cooking is delicious which makes it OK with me if I have to be his sou chef and it takes me a week to clean up the kitchen! If I am to have an entire meal timed, finished and served, my focus cannot be on one picky little recipe! Therefore I read ahead. Aha! There are twelve steps to this recipe and I think five, nine, and eleven are unnecessary tomfoolery.
In the kitchen our kids used to give me “presentation, ten; taste, zero” after the song from A Chorus Line. We have had various treats and tricks as meals. My thought is: “If I make it look impressive, no one will notice what I forgot.” This attitude is something that only makes me feel better. I once, only once mind you, made apple crisp where something went awry. Our children came home from school and Dave from work wafting in on the delicious scent of cinnamon, apples, and brown sugar still warm from the oven. I had cut it straight out of the oven and placed it on serving dishes for our after-dinner dessert. Once the main course dishes were cleared, I served the apple crisp. It was cement that would have kept the face on the Sphinx intact. We chipped, sawed, hacked, and gnawed into our first bites. Once in our mouths, the dessert flavor was great! That proved to be a good thing since our teeth were glued solidly together and all we could do was wait in silence for the apple crisp to dissolve. Once people were able to speak again, my dessert was re-christened “apple crap” and even though I now produce excellent apple crisp the new title has remained. I have mentioned my friend Gail before. She liked to serve Ebleskevers (a Scandinavian pancake) with orange syrup. She silenced nearly 30 people at one of their church up north weekends by over boiling her syrup. No one picked on her for years!
Another detail I miss is kitchen towels set too close to a burner or candle catch fire. I know I shared in an earlier blog that people refuse me matches for good reason. However, there have been charred meals pulled forth from our oven to rival any grill out gone to the bad. I put eggs on to boil and went about making beds, vacuuming, dusting, etc. I did smell something odd that seemed to get stronger and make my eyes burn, but assumed a neighbor was doing something stupid. When I found the eggs, the pan was burned, the eggs had exploded and I know I don’t want to go to Hell because the burnt sulfur was with us for days! Most times when I burned something in the kitchen, my friend Donna was visiting us. Donna also is blessed with detail orientation and is an excellent cook. In fact, it is usually Donna who lets me know she has read my blog and in paragraph so and so, sentence such and such, did I intend . . .
Once when Donna was visiting, I was trying a new recipe for cake topping. Butter cream and cream cheese frostings are easy for me. I also like to make the whipped egg white frosting that turns out similar to marshmallow cream. Boiled frostings are not the best for me nor do I prepare Royal Icing for anything other than decorations not to be eaten. However, this particular recipe seemed so simple. One baked cake, still warm, is topped with miniature marshmallows, walnut pieces, and chocolate or caramel chips. Place under the broiler for two or three minutes, remove it from the boiler, and swirl the melted topping to make lovely designs. Family and guest heard my screech from the kitchen and were horrified to see me coming fleetly through the living room toward the door, with a flaming cake pan in my oven-mitted hands. Dave, ever quick in emergencies, jumped to his feet and opened the door. I registered the expression on his face as I heaved the pan, cake, and flames into a snow bank.
One excessively cold winter evening, again visited by Donna, everyone but the Disaster Queen was in the living room chatting. I was in the kitchen finishing a meal with no problems attached. I was plating the roast and placing carrots and potatoes around it. I entered the living room to announce dinner. Dave was reading a newspaper; Donna, Helen and Marc were chatting quietly and just across the street was a house fully engulfed in flames! I screamed “fire!” and grabbed the phone to make a 911 call. We stared in disbelief as fire trucks wailed to a stop outside our windows and battled the fire. The house was already a total loss and the fire was so hot it had melted siding on nearby homes but not incinerated them. Arson was suspected as the man who lived there had vacated weeks before and had serious money problems. When I asked how they could sit there and not see the flames nor smell the smoke, their answer was poignant. “We thought you were burning something in the kitchen!” Drat! I hate honesty.
So, they smelled the fire but didn’t investigate. Re-reading the beginning of this brings to mind there is one more Easter egg tale. Marc played hockey. He was a goalie (a good one a proud mother may say). Helen was statistician for the high school team (a good one a proud mother may boast one more time). The point is we were around hockey arenas, hockey players, hockey gear, and hockey locker rooms many of our waking hours. The gear of a hockey player takes on a smell that creates an aura that just orders “stand back!” The smell permeated everything, curled nose hairs and singed eyelashes. One year after the season ended, I washed and dried the hockey pants, shirt, under shirt and jock strap and hung them in the laundry area. The pads were put out in the sun to fully dry and air. Easter was late that year. To be funny, I put a hard boiled, dyed Easter egg in Marc’s jock strap. It was never found.
Late summer brought about hockey once more as teams began practice for the coming season. Marc began stuffing his gear bag with all the things that were needed, taping his new hockey sticks, and checking skates to see if they needed sharpening. The first day of practice rolled around and Marc came down the hall in total dismay. “There’s a rotten egg in my strap!” Oh, the horror of what I had done! The egg and the strap were sealed in a Ziploc baggie and thrown in the garbage. We were only slightly late to practice because of stopping to purchase a new jock strap. I sat in the stands not wanting to make eye contact with the coach as Marc reported for duty. I don’t know what he told his coach, I don’t really want to know what he told his coach, I am hoping I never find out what he told his coach! The bald face truth is that none of us realized the smell wasn’t “eau d’ hockee”!
So we smelled the rotten egg, but we didn’t investigate it. How often do we fall into pits of our own making because we smell the smell of Satan but don’t recognize him? God says the Devil “prowls around like a roaring lion” seeking us, his prey, to destroy us and to hurt God. There is an adage if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck. Too often we don’t investigate the odor or the duck so we can save ourselves from grief. Our God is a God of details. He leaves nothing to chance. He is always there to answer our question, “What’s that smell?” and hopes we will take time to ask Him. He is standing by to identify our danger zones and help us to escape them. All we have to do is remember to ask. It also doesn’t hurt to look back at those times when we were oblivious to danger and God saved us anyway. Praise God for saving us because He notices the details!
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