Today I was thinking about reaching boiling points...both in cooking and emotional stewing and spewing. I remembered how happy my Mother was when she got a pressure cooker. Her friend Berna was with us for a few weeks and she and Mother decided to cook split pea soup. I remember the mess as the gasket blew out and there was a geyser of green spew that hit the ceiling and was dripping all over. It was a gas range and they couldn't get close to it because of the boiling hot soup just shooting everywhere.
It was so vivid in my mind today that I decided to check and see if it was just an exaggerated girlhood memory or a vivid memory of nightmare proportions.
I found this. My memory held the truth!
Split beans and peas are tricky to pressure cook and you should not be attempting this if you're new to pressure cooking. That's because you first need to learn how to regulate heat so that it's not too high at the beginning (which will shoot the beans through the vent, muck it up, and cause a dangerous situation) and during pressure cooking. Any over-pressure situation will be dangerous.
Mother and Berna were horrified and terrified. Dixie and I were shocked into silence. Then my Mother got so mad because she and my Daddy had just put a new ceiling tile in the kitchen and it was not painted and waterproofed yet. I'll let you imagine how she felt.
To her credit, she re-read the book, and did continue to use and enjoy her pressure cooker.
Sometimes in life we let off that type of steam. Pressure builds up. Not monitored or attended to and there is an explosion.
There are pans that overheat and overflow and cause a mess. Sometimes stuff is burnt. It's a nasty business sometime. Like life!
I have learned that I'm more the cup is full type of person. I experienced that scenario recently. I am used to my life and the stress and pressures that are a part of my normal. My cup is filled to the brim all the time and yet I can handle it pretty good and juggle all the plates. Well, I try. Because I'm up to my eyeballs with stuff, my stuff, it is familiar and I'm okay BUT a couple of extra things happened and I felt the cup overfilled and ran over the top. I felt out of my normal. I didn't know how to deal with these extra things. It was to much for me. It put me over the top. I deal with Terry having extreme pain, off and on, and hearing his suffering but what brought me down was...a toilet seat that fell apart. Very early a.m., I looked in Terry's bathroom and there it was!... on the floor! in 4 pieces- lid/seat/2 screw things. I tried to put it together and I couldn't!
This impacted me because earlier my dryer stopped working! That's a game changer, isn't it???
Also Terry's pain was so dreadful that we were at a loss.
So here we are in the midst of this isolation and we can't call and ask for help. We don't want anyone in here plus people aren't necessarily eager to come in either!
So my cup was flowing over and I felt like my hands were tied. I added my own waterworks to the mess and tearfully told Terry that I can't get the toilet seat fixed. We ended up putting a small chair in the bathroom for him to sit on and he got it put together! (some things never change! he asked me for a butter knife! I said - don't you have a screwdriver in your toolbox? He said- oh, yes. I do. He then opened up the seat of his walker, which has an assortment of tools in his toolbox, and found his screwdriver.)
Terry figured out what the dryer will need and we will get that fixed after detention is over. I have a short single clothesline that wouldn't really hold a load of clothes. I ordered two clothes drying racks, similar to what my Mother used during Alaskan winters, and they work great.
When that pain bout was so out of control, and I won't go into the details, but it was dreadful, I ended up calling our son and he gave his Dad a blessing over the phone. (our ministering friend would have suited up and come but we didn't feel comfy with that) Eventually the pain subsided and he could get up off the floor.
Anyhow...not trying to be all whiny and complainy. Just saying- there was a patch of really rough water splashing on everything but we got through it. We felt blessed.
Today in an effort to stay calm, and keep that peace that I love, I decided to set one thing in order. I knew that would feel good. It did! Sounds strange to think that organizing a freezer with containers and labels would feel good but it sure did! I enjoyed it! I walked past lots of other jobs that need attention and settled on the freezer shelves.
In studying this week...this was just so perfect for me!
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President Russell M. Nelson has taught that “Saints can be happy under every circumstance. We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!” This is because “the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.”President Russell M. Nelson, “Joy and Spiritual Survival,” Ensign, November 2016, 81–84, online at lds.org.
1 comment:
Hey Nancy...been away for awhile. I was suppose to have surgery on April 6th but it was postponed because of the virus....scheduled now for May 11th. I went out yesterday for the first time (besides work at the hospital) to Costco and felt like I went on an extravagant vacation! Wahoo! Love this recent post of yours...you always give me such good insight. Hi to Terry!
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