A few years ago, I was a middle-of-the-night regular at my local gym. I worked out for many months, and in that January, I saw a WHOLE big bunch of Facebook whining about all the newbies who show up to the gym in January, working on resolutions. A lot of folks kept saying they couldn't wait for the resolution-people to drop out, so the gym would go back to normal.
At the time, I didn't really understand it (going in the middle of the nights meant I got the place pretty much to myself), but for the past few weeks, I totally get it. Except for me, it hasn't been about the gym. It's been about the baking aisle in the grocery store.
I bake a lot (and cook sometimes, too, when I want to test if the fire alarm is working) and every grocery trip has me wandering down the baking aisle looking for something. And like a gym at 1:00 am, the baking aisle throughout the year is pretty empty. Except from about Thanksgiving through Christmas. Suddenly I'm dodging all these people who look terrified and are anxiously comparing different types of molasses, hovering between the two racks of spices, and nervously poking different pie crusts.
And much like the old lady I will be one day, I get annoyed at navigating all the people in my aisle and I think about running them over with my cart. But then I realize that in another two weeks, they won't be baking any more and will go back to the other aisles and I can grab my evaporated milk, flour, molasses, and powered ginger in peace. (FYI: I'm making more cookies today for a fundraiser.)
So yeah, we all have little parts of the world carved out as ours and sometimes a whole big bunch of nervous folks show up in that part. And we can help them, we can ignore them, or we can whack them with our carts.
Moral of today's story: the world is a strange place and my coffee is empty.
An Erinku:
various to-do lists
for today
at least agree
on cookies
