More Stuff, More Nonsense

{or Why I Settle for Less}

I spent a good portion of yesterday writing the beginnings of blog posts (I think I wrote three false starts). It is so hard to get over my perfectionism...in more areas than just my blog.

For the past week, I have been vacationing at my husband's cabin on the Puget Sound. The first day or so was spent making the cabin inhabitable. One of my tasks during this deep-cleaning adventure was to clean out one of the refrigerators, and free it from mold and grime. As I was busying myself about this project, my mother-in-law came by and mentioned with concern: "It doesn't have to be perfect." I breathed a sigh of relief. She had given me permission to just do my best, and then (as my theology teacher used to say) give it a rest.

My perfectionism applies to other everyday tasks. I have my list of things to do, like everyone else. But I also have all of the expectations that are attached to each item. I know I need to send back that muffin tin with the cracked lid back to Amazon. But I don't have a box readily available, so I leave it in stasis until I have the time to look for one. Or at least, that's what I tell myself. In reality, I will probably leave it there on the floor by my desk until Monday morning when I am frantically getting ready to bring it by UPS on my way back from 6:30 AM Mass. I trick myself into believing I save myself time by all of this stalling, and leaving-until-later behavior. But deep down (and in moments of rare clarity) I know the truth.

St. Ignatius knew the truth, too. Procrastination in the Devil's tool:

"We should never postpone a good work, no matter how small it may be, with the thought of later doing something greater. It is a very common temptation of the enemy to be always placing before us the perfection of things to come and bring us to make little of the present."

And that's the key: this summer I have been trying my hardest to fight the urge to "make little of the present." Instead, as my dear friend Katherine said in her blog today, I need to make more of the present. Be more. 

So why is it that we often settle for less? I think perhaps the answer for me is: because I am scared that if I give my all to something or someone, I will fail anyway.

But, knowing my fears and limitations, I will press on. For me, the smallest actions are sometimes the greatest victories. Cleaning up right away after dinner, instead of waiting for a time when I feel like it (never!). Tucking my chair in when I leave the table. Completing tasks before moving on to the next one (so hard!). The answer lies in simplicity and order, I think. The rest falls into the category of stuff and nonsense.

Domestic Adventures: Quiche Lorraine

One reason I’m so reluctant to bake is that I get pretty poor results (almost) every time I try. Case in point: the crust on this Quiche Lorraine*. I followed the recipe,** word for word (I even chilled the shortening before adding it). But try as I might, I couldn’t roll the dough out as requested. All of the fat…er butter and shortening…kept sticking to the cutting board, the rolling pin, my hands, pretty much everything but the crust itself.

So I finally formed two balls of dough with my hands and flattened them out in each pie pan.

Here are the results:

Yeah, I was disappointed, too. So I’m not sure what I did wrong…except maybe some of the crust got left behind on the cutting board, etc. Also I used all wheat flour. Maybe that affected the consistency?

The filling was easy enough. I combined six eggs, 2 cups of evaporated milk, 2 cups of almond milk, 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese (recipe called for swiss), ½ t. salt, dash of pepper, and a dash of nutmeg. I added 1 onion, chopped and sauteed, and about ½ cup of diced ham (from some lunch meat).

The only thing that made me a bit nervous about the filling was that when I poured it into the pie crusts, the filling easily covered the edges of the pie crust. Since I was worried about the possibility of overflowing during the baking process, I put a cookie sheet on the rack below the pie pans.

In case you were wondering, a watched quiche (much like the famed pot of liquid) never bakes.

If you listen closely enough you will hear, “Stop wasting your time looking through the oven window, wondering when I’ll be ready to eat. I still need another 25 minutes to cook. So go read or something. Or write about me on your blog…”

Honestly it’s only my vanity that is concerned about how the quiche looks. I am much more concerned about how it will taste. (Especially since it’s almost six o’clock and I’m starving).

Ah, the timer is going off. The moment of truth has come. How did it turn out?

Well, in typical Master of Philosophy form, this was my husband's reaction to seeing the quiche:

M: Okay, Andy, time to pick which one we'll tonight. The other one we'll throw away (sarcasm).

A: Oh, honey, why? That would be wasteful! 

A: Is there any difference between the two?

M: Nope. Same ingredients. Just pick which one looks good to you.

A: This reminds me of the philosophical problem of Buridan's Ass (Proceeds to explain that in the scenario, a donkey sits between two identical bales of hay and must choose which one to eat. Seeing no difference between them, he can't choose. So he starves to death).

M: I see. Are you suggesting that we, like Buridan's ass, just stare at these two delicious quiches until we starve?

A: No...(still not sure which one to pick)

M: This one is darker.

A: Okay, let's eat it!

But once we sat down, and took our first bites, the verdict was clear. Delicious! A+! And if you don't believe me, ask my husband, who ate FOUR helpings. 

I think he likes it. 

*Recipe came from the More-with-Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre

**For your sanity and mine, I didn't describe all the steps of the recipe. If you are interested in it, I can either send it to you, or you can purchase your very own copy of More-with-Less (I highly recommend it!).

A Renewed Effort (and one of the reasons I left Facebook)

As some of you may know, I am in the process of deleting my Facebook account. (For more info on that, read this article). That being said, I do not desire to communicate less with those whom I hold dear. On the contrary, I hope that leaving Facebook will encourage me to be more communicative. One of the reasons I stopped writing for awhile was because I wanted to focus on living  in the present moment. An inherent problem in writing, as I saw it then, was that it involved constantly looking back, reliving past moments. I didn't want to be writing about other people's exciting adventures, I wanted to have my own!

Perhaps the greatest irony of this attitude was that, instead of writing (in my blog or journal or letters, etc), I wasn't living. No. I had chosen to spend a lot of my time on Facebook. Oh, I spent so much time on there! Six years of my life have been spent (wasted?) updating my account, adding pictures, crafting pithy status updates, scrolling endlessly through information about people I hardly knew. In short, I was doing anything but writing.

So what do I have to show for all that effort? Not a whole lot, actually. So, in an effort to live more AND write more, I am going to focus on this blog. What will I be writing about? I'm not sure. This blog has always been a patchwork quilt of sorts, based on my varied interests. But I do hope to document my life here in the Northwest, from the perspective of a born-and-raised Midwesterner.

So here's to a renewed effort on my part. I hope this is an enriching experience for me, and for all my readers.