Yum!

Just when I think I’m doing so well…I’m a list maker, you know…I find that I have four…four…bags of sushi rice in my pantry! Three of the four had cunningly hidden themselves behind other items so that I’ve obviously thought I was out of this once-a-year use staple. Sometimes I amaze myself. How could I have bought this several times without realizing I was stocking up on something I so rarely need? To be fair to myself, I know I didn’t do this in the past few weeks. No, I’ve been beefing up my rice supply since we moved here two years ago. And it now appears…we don’t eat sushi very often. Who knew?

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum. Last week I went to the grocery twice and both times forgot to buy kitchen trash bags, although I had carefully noted, as a hint to myself…top of my list, big letters…not to leave without buying a replacement box. So, trash bags are on the hit parade again. Maybe the third time’s the charm.

I like to think I’m organized. This is not a subject I discuss with my husband. We don’t see eye to eye on everything.  I acknowledge that I have pockets of dysfunction…witness the pantry find of a small country’s supply of sushi rice. And I admit that I am not a freezer manager. In fact, the best way to permanently hide something from myself is to disguise it as a leftover stored in the freezer for future retrieval. I know that really, this is just a way to make peace with my conscience. My thrifty grandmother would be appalled if I threw out a perfectly good portion of leftovers, so I smartly detour these items through the freezer. Wrap in Saran or stash in a freezer bag, abandon for a few months, and presto! off to the trash with no guilt!  Even my grandmother would throw out freezer burned food. When she discovered it. (She’s not a freezer manager either, and there are legendary stories in my family of the age of some items she discovered in her freezer. But she turns 90 in June, so she’s off the hook for everything at this point.)

My mother-in-law stores cash in her freezer and found quite a stash in the process of cleaning out a few years ago. Turned out she had several thousand dollars tucked away among the frozen veggies. Not me. First of all, I don’t use cash, so it would be unlikely that I would find money stored anywhere in my house. But the idea of finding anything truly useful in my freezer, beyond ice and ice cream, is a novelty.

What to do, what to do? I think of the number of things I juggled this week: work, home, email, blogging, phone calls, friends, errands, chores, the daily grind. I’m sure that somewhere in all of this is a highly functioning person. I actually had a pretty good week and I checked off the majority of my to dos with a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. I was on a roll…until this morning. Now I’m thinking of throwing a small sushi party for the residents of Ketchikan. I have some extra rice on hand…won’t even have to go shopping. I’m organized, you know.