I was feeling stressed about something the other day. It was
the proverbial straw that was threatening to do unspeakable things to my poor
camel's back. Stress has a way of making ordinary tasks feel overwhelming. Suddenly my
laundry pile was screaming at me, and my calendar felt like a bag of bricks. I
was beginning to unravel, so while neither of my responses to the laundry or calendar were rooted in reality, I did the only reasonable thing a girl could
do at such a moment—I went to the basement to shred old tax documents.
After half an hour of intense shredding, my equilibrium was
restored. By the time the bags of scrap are carted away by the Recycler, there
will be plenty of space in my soul to breathe, mop the floors and roast
tomatoes for soup.
We all deal with stress in different ways. Mine is to
marshall the outside in order to manage the chaos within by tidying the
kitchen, stripping my wardrobe of cram, or cleaning the crawl space in the
basement of un-needed detritus.
So, whether it is a tornado warning, a disagreement, an unexpected hospital visit, or an aggravating news segment, you will probably find me in the basement shredding old tax documents...and praying, because there is no better way to manage stress than to put the matter into hands that can handle it.
'into hands that can handle it'...I really like that. I'm glad I found this because right now I feel the same way...the cake i baked for Victoria's birthday is the kind you flip over to cool(chiffon cake) and I'm not sure why but it fell out of the pan while cooling...my guess is it was not quite done in the middle...so now I'm juggling taxiing, to-do lists, $$, feeling a little over-wrought. Time to put it in hands that can handle it and tackle MUST do's one task/bill at a time, even if a clock-day is too short!
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed the imagery in this post:)
I tried not to laugh about the cake. It's just that I have so many "baking that went wrong" stories myself and, if nothing else, they yield a good laugh in the telling. It is reassuring to know that all my effort hasn't gone completely to waste. I wrote an Ugly Cake post a few years ago that fits the genre.
Delete:) thank-you for the humor you shared beneath my post. I've often said, if we didn't make any mistakes whatever would we laugh about!
Deleteand All's well that ends well, right?
Do we ever deal with stress differently! Just the mention of crawl space and the thought of me going in it stresses me out!
ReplyDeleteMy forever remedy has been to grab cookbooks and a notebook and plan company menus complete with table settings. Not many of them ever get done now but I still like to plan.
And I also rub Stress Away oil on my wrist, heart and neck. Takes my BP down every time.
And I also try to remember that my weakness is made perfect in His strength, and I'm so grateful for that.
Would it help at all if I told you my crawl space is nice? Well, kind of nice. Dust. Bugs. Webs. And my knees are getting too old to crawl. Okay, it is a little stressful, but the pleasure of Throwing-Things-Out makes up for it.
DeleteShredding is the perfect antidote to many sorts of aggravation. Today we have brilliant sunshine and that is the best tonic of all.
ReplyDeleteI had a cake malfunction for my daughter-in-law's birthday. It is supposed to be fudgy and squidgy but not a runny mess. It turned out of the tin in several sections. I rammed it all back in and sent it back to the oven the next day and it was none the worse for treatment that would never be sanctioned by any cookery writer.
Welcome to the Ugly Cake Club, UK Chapter, Lucille. If you could manage another disaster or two, you could be appointed President of your chapter since you are first on the scene.
DeleteI'll have to try that one...cooking it the next day. Although, I suppose you could have insisted on calling it "after the eruption" of a molten lava cake.