Leftovers
In spite of the dream suggesting otherwise, I did not miss out on the luscious Costco cake. I was able to snag a piece shortly after it was cut. The woman who the cake was for wasn’t so lucky since she was actually at the hospital in labor when we ate it. We heard today that she had a baby boy just under five pounds. So congrats to her and our apologies for not saving any cake.
Since I was the cake-getter, I had to house it in my refrigerator overnight. I thought this was going to be a challenge, you know, trying to stuff a whole half sheet cake into my already full fridge, but it turns out about half the contents of the fridge were way past the point of being edible. Nathan came home from golf Thursday night and saw the tower of Rubbermaid and Tupperware sitting on the kitchen counter, all of them full of things one normally sees in the trash bins of your local high school cafeteria. “All of that stuff is bad?” he asked.
We emptied out the containers together, each of us taking turns asking questions like, “When was the last time we made chicken noodle soup?” and “Is this pancake batter? I don’t even want to know.” Nathan was disgusted and insisted that we should decide if a meal is worth bringing back for a repeat before we pack it up and store the leftovers in the fridge.
The thing is, I don’t know if I’m going to want to eat something again or not. The Dutch part of me absolutely refuses to throw away good food, even if I know it will stay in the fridge until its chemical composition is completely altered. Who knows? Tomorrow I may want pancakes for breakfast and will be very thankful for that half cup of already made batter. More likely I’ll feel like eggs and forget about the batter, but it still has to be there just in case.
This logic extends outside our fridge as well. Nathan and I are planning a garage sale for Memorial Day weekend and have been creating piles in several parts of our house of things we want to sell. One thing we haven’t been able to agree on is the sale of baby clothes. He says baby clothes will draw more buyers to our house and I say we need to keep them in case we decide to have another baby or if we accidentally find ourselves having another. “We do have quite a few things that could work for a boy or a girl,” I said.
“Then sell all the girl stuff and keep the gender neutral stuff,” he said.
“But what if we have another girl?” I asked. “Then we’d have to go out and buy more girls clothes.”
I’m not at all ready for another child. I don’t know if we’ll ever be ready for more than just Autumn, but I have to have those clothes just in case. Plus, by deciding to sell the clothes I am admitting that my daughter is growing up. Yeah, I know biology and all that will keep her sprouting in spite of my protestations, but I can look at those clothes and remember the time when her little body folded perfectly into my chest and her feet barely reached my belly button.
It’s probably best to keep the clothes for now. Blame it on the part of me that’s Dutch and the other part of me that wants to keep my baby a baby as long as I can.
Since I was the cake-getter, I had to house it in my refrigerator overnight. I thought this was going to be a challenge, you know, trying to stuff a whole half sheet cake into my already full fridge, but it turns out about half the contents of the fridge were way past the point of being edible. Nathan came home from golf Thursday night and saw the tower of Rubbermaid and Tupperware sitting on the kitchen counter, all of them full of things one normally sees in the trash bins of your local high school cafeteria. “All of that stuff is bad?” he asked.
We emptied out the containers together, each of us taking turns asking questions like, “When was the last time we made chicken noodle soup?” and “Is this pancake batter? I don’t even want to know.” Nathan was disgusted and insisted that we should decide if a meal is worth bringing back for a repeat before we pack it up and store the leftovers in the fridge.
The thing is, I don’t know if I’m going to want to eat something again or not. The Dutch part of me absolutely refuses to throw away good food, even if I know it will stay in the fridge until its chemical composition is completely altered. Who knows? Tomorrow I may want pancakes for breakfast and will be very thankful for that half cup of already made batter. More likely I’ll feel like eggs and forget about the batter, but it still has to be there just in case.
This logic extends outside our fridge as well. Nathan and I are planning a garage sale for Memorial Day weekend and have been creating piles in several parts of our house of things we want to sell. One thing we haven’t been able to agree on is the sale of baby clothes. He says baby clothes will draw more buyers to our house and I say we need to keep them in case we decide to have another baby or if we accidentally find ourselves having another. “We do have quite a few things that could work for a boy or a girl,” I said.
“Then sell all the girl stuff and keep the gender neutral stuff,” he said.
“But what if we have another girl?” I asked. “Then we’d have to go out and buy more girls clothes.”
I’m not at all ready for another child. I don’t know if we’ll ever be ready for more than just Autumn, but I have to have those clothes just in case. Plus, by deciding to sell the clothes I am admitting that my daughter is growing up. Yeah, I know biology and all that will keep her sprouting in spite of my protestations, but I can look at those clothes and remember the time when her little body folded perfectly into my chest and her feet barely reached my belly button.
It’s probably best to keep the clothes for now. Blame it on the part of me that’s Dutch and the other part of me that wants to keep my baby a baby as long as I can.
