My list of virtues

Well, I was virtuous for about 15 mins. I took chicken breasts out of the freezer to defrost for the chicken fajitas we will hopefully consume in a unburnt state this evening (I have a tendency to overcook meats. This comes from a rich childhood heritage of my father and mother blackening meat on spits so we would not succumb to the poisoning effects of E.coli present in every flesh product. I remember fondly the times when my father would take us to the beaches in Kuwait, make a roaring outdoor fire and proceed to make inedible each and every portion of dismembered chicken that he had lovingly marinated for 48 hours previously. Now, when my husband lightly bastes and warms up the chicken breast on the overpriced piece of male ego outside on our deck (our gas BBQ), I shudder at the pinkness and unripeness of the meat and I know in my heart that one day my precious male inklings will die a horrible death, writhing in the throes of food poisoning because my husband refuses to cook meat properly. I mean burn it properly.

But let me go back to my list of virtues. I have taken that chicken breast (actually two of them) out of the freezer and placed it to defrost on the kitchen island where the washed dishes are drying on a wet towel. We do not have a dish washer as I believe that dish washers were designed by evil corporate entities to waste water, energy and eliminate valuable family bonding time (much of which is spent harassing members of the family to wash and dry dishes manually). I have not yet dried and put away the assortment of plates I collected from various thrift stores in Calgary when I was in graduate school. Oh, yes, the only panacea for the torture of doing that endless MSc. in Calgary was the abundance of cast off products that the newly rich in Calgary tend to donate to the obscure thrift stores that I frequented. The consequence of this habit of avoiding the laboratory was that I did not go on to do a PhD but instead happily absconded with my MSc. and then started the genesis story (the boys) since my 37 year old eggs were about to expire and my husband wanted children ( I said that was fine with me and would tolerate the entire business of being a baby incubator if they turned out to be girls but of course, he did not live up to his part in this bargain and made sure that his contribution to the consummation of the eggs was this - those damn Y chromosomes. And so we had boys). But I was not talking initally about eggs (expiring or otherwise) or dishes from thrift store (blue willow or plain) and I was focussed on my list of virtues.

So the chicken breast for supper. I tidied under the kitchen table. The boys have this habit of dropping bits of food down there as if we have a hungry puppy, ready and eager to scarf down their offerings. We do not have any live creatures other than them. In fact, they are even not very lively at times. What else did I do? I put a load of laundry to wash and walked over the mound of remaining laundry with my dried laundry. I took the laundry basket upstairs and decanted the contents of that basket on the bed where it joins the sad collection of unmatched socks from the last few weeks that are eager to be reunited with their love partners. I am now here. I have other things to do such as scrub out the toilet bowls but as you can imagine, that task does not exactly call to me.

I will finish my third cup of coffee and listen yet again to "take this waltz" by L.C. and then venture to go where I haven't gone in a decade which is my walk in closet where hubby and the older boy have hung up the skeletons of all their many pieces of shirts, pants, shorts, suits that lack buttons. God knows why they believe I have magical powers and will be able to conjure up buttons from thin air but such is the simple simplicity of men that they still believe (even after 18 years of living with me, my husband still believes) that I can sew on a button onto a piece of fabric. Hah! I'll show them. I'm off to do the rest of the laundry, I'll think about the buttons later after I have found the sewing box.