Something is wrong with this picture.
Husband Steve is cavorting with his brothers in the Basque motherland. My older child, a college junior, is leading a group of incoming freshmen on a kayaking expedition in the glorious Pacific Northwest. Child #2 is off to orchestra camp, to spend a week playing Grieg, Stravinsky and Wagner with 100 of her new best friends.
And I am home, defrosting the freezer.
Everything fits in the ice chest for temporary storage, with the exception of these two orphaned containers of ice cream:
I think I will just eat them.
On the plus side, I have control of the soundtrack -- a rare occurrence in my house. I am usually the last one to grab the family iPod. But today, I have the chance to choose the music -- and the mood.
First stop: self-pity! Soundtrack: Edith Piaf, because she, too, suffered greatly:
But that gets old after about two songs (one and a half, unless one of them is "La Vie en Rose"). Besides, the sheer exuberance of scientific curiosity gets the better of me pretty quickly (soundtrack: Particle Man, by They Might Be Giants). Here is the bowl of ice I scraped off the bottom of my freezer, chunky with God-knows-what food bits and general filth:
I'm quite sure that if I were to defrost this and culture it in some appropriate substrate, I'd discover the next penicillin, a miracle cure for something dreadful. I nominate head lice.
I have this nagging feeling that I could perhaps get the most out of this experience if I could only surrender myself to the here and now, and capture the Zen of freezer-cleaning. (Soundtrack: The Gyuto Monks):
But not really. Because Zen is incompatible with nagging feelings, and also probably with pink rubber gloves.
I think, in the end, I will need to settle for the satisfaction of a job well done (soundtrack: Queen's "We Are the Champions"). Just look at this:
Magnificent! From now on, nobody eats out of it but me.