At my age, I should know better. About a lot of things.
Like knowing when to keep my mouth shut or speak up; when to say ‘no’ to one more beer; when to close up the bag of chips before I regret the puff factor showing up the next day, etc.
You get it. My ‘I should know better’ list is pretty long (I’ve skipped over many other important things. Duh…I said I should know better about a lot of things…).
Yesterday, I remembered a very important ‘I should know better’ thing. It is called the ‘when to realize something was left behind for me to do’ thing.
This involves an object, left on purpose and ignored long enough by myself and my husband. Self-imposed and left behind for me – because I have too many rules about how to take care of it. Our adorable mini-loaf pan has a ‘you should know better’ than to put that pan in water too long, it will rust and not work and it will be ruined and we won’t be able to use it rule about it.
Even though we both know better, when we use it to bake some bread, it sits until my ‘I should know better’ factor gets the best of me or sometimes longer and something worse sets in. That something worse bubbled up to the surface.
Procrustination is the word for one of my favorite things “I should know better” about.
You read that right. Procrustination.
It is a form of procrastination involving food that has crusted itself onto an object waiting to be cleaned. It happens when one (aka, my husband, knows the rule list is too long for him to clean the object) puts off the cleaning for me to do, and I wait until almost the last possible moment before I clean it.
Wa-lah…and there you have it, procrustination in its finest form.
Yesterday, was d-day. I decided to overcome procrustination and make this pan sparkle once again. I knew that if I want to bake any small loaves of bread for the holidays, I better get it cleaned now. Enough time has passed already anyhow – Thanksgiving and my birthday have gone by and this can’t wait until Christmas. Unless Santa is bringing me a new one? Nah…this one is perfectly fine. Just crusty dirty. For now.
Again, at my age, I should know better. Even though I had a long list of other things to do, this pan was begging to be cleaned. Yes, I checked for other ‘I delayed cleaning too long forms’ nope, no mold, just crust – whew!
So I grabbed the handy-dandy little plastic scraper from Pampered Chef and set out to remove the crusted on remains of banana bread. 10 minutes later, the serious crust was off and discarded in the garbage.
After patiently waiting for three weeks, the pan – previously succumbed to procrastination’s crusting magic – was now ready to be washed and brought back to the proper ready-for-baking-life.
Bubbles sure are cool to watch as they form and pop. They sparkle so nice in the sunlight beaming in through the window.
I begin my work, knowing with a little extra elbow grease, a dishcloth, warm water dancing with bubbles, and time (10 more minutes), the pan (and all its adorable little sections) once washed and rinsed will glisten in shining glory.
There is something therapeutic about washing dishes. I like to let my mind wander…for photo ops, of course. I smile with a twinkle in my eye as I bring the pan back to life.
After many attempts (now I remember why I put off cleaning this pan…these darn little sections are a bitch to get cleaned, just when I think I’m done, I notice another corner I missed and have to start all over again…my smile faded slightly) the pan eventually came clean.
Rinse. Wash again. Rinse. Wash again. Rinse. Wash again. Rinse. And finally done. All sparkling clean and ready to air dry. Yes, air dry. I couldn’t see why I should waste any more time on this pan. I’m not getting any younger you know and I have other ‘I should know better’ things to do.
“Been there, done that” with the pan, but yours looks good as new! Fun post!
Glad to hear I’m not alone! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for taking time to stop by to read my post!