Frost free May day

It’s Victoria Day in Canada. A holiday here for me and I spent the day, after a rather busy social weekend, cleaning up. Long long overdue for a spring time air out and spruce up, I tackled the kitchen today. I live in a real cute main floor unit in a two story walk up. While my place oozes with charm and character, it lacks some of the more mainstream conveniences like a dishwasher and frost free fridge. I’m not complaining. But given my abhorrence of all things domestic (except baking – yummm pie) this means some household tasks take longer chez MB than they would for another. It takes a Herculean effort to get me to do dishes and I need to get good and fed up with chipping away the icy buildup in my freezer just to stow a pint of Haagen Dasz before I even contemplate the defrost. Today was the day. My toes still smarting from an ugly incident with an iceberg flying out the freezer at an unfortunately rapid speed, I figured I’d best roll up my pj bottoms (why do I always end up with large puddles of cold water all over the kitchen tiles?) and get to it.

I started with a general clean out. An old hard orange or two in the crisper and some carrots sprouting roots into the bin and a few long forgotten fuzzy containers of curry or stew or maybe it was leek and potato soup at the back of the fridge discarded, I turned the dial to off last night and hoped for a slow melt. 12 hours later, retrieval of no less than 8 given up for lost Tupperware containers, several therapeutic whacks at a monstrous ice wall inside my freezer and I’m done. Fridge is sparkling clean and there’s loads of room for leftovers and ice cubes and made ahead meals.

As I sit here, sipping a nice cup of Earl Grey, wearing wooly socks to warm up my still freezing toes, I wonder why I generally leave these things to the last possible moment. I am a card carrying procrastinator. At work, in school, with my writing and most certainly relating to all manner of mundane household chores, as much as I can get away with it, I put off, stall, avoid, defer and drag my feet. To my credit, I deliver the goods professionally. I get stuff done at work and I’ve learned how to time it right to allow me enough wiggle room to ensure I do a really good job. My assignments for class get done the night before and I’m so used to writing in big blitzy chunks of time as opposed to a slow and steady pace that I have convinced myself I do my best work under pressure.

In reality, I know a frosty freezer is no big deal. I am as happy as ever to eat up the last of the Ben & Jerry’s rather than carve out a spot in the frost for a few scoops of Cherry Garcia. A workaround, it might be called at the office. But it occurs to me, there are people in this world who make grocery shopping lists ahead of time, who vacuum and dust every weekend, who don’t have to sniff the milk in their fridge or who never run out of toilet paper. It’s here that I usually chime in with my life before chores mantra. Superiorly I’d rant about how time spent with those we love, doing that we love is far more important than ensuring we have a dust bunny free home. But what if, just a thought now, it’s possible to change. I’m an open minded person. I’d like to think I’m capable of growth. Maybe as a start I’ll lay my clothes out tonight before I go to work. Of course that will mean I’d have to wade through a pile of unfolded laundry on the chair in my bedroom. And if I’m going to go wading, I might as well fold. And if I’m going to fold, I might as well iron the shirts. Jeesh. I think I’ll take Murph for a walk instead. And while I’m out, there’s a Baskin Robbins up the street. All this talk has got me craving some ice cream. After all, I’ve got room now for a quart now.