During the fall season, I keep a pot simmering on the stove filled with apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. It makes my house smell amazing. It smells like I have been baking delicious things all day when, in fact, I haven’t made so much as toast. If I had, I wouldn’t need the pot.
It’s like super awesome kitchen Febreze and if I sit in my kitchen and close my eyes I am carried away to the home of an autumn fairy ’s family where they are having a get-together. The whole place is filled with all of the beauty and food and warmth and laughter that any mortal can bear.
Did you ever see those Febreze commercials where people are brought, blindfolded, into a really gross place - like a hot car filled with dirty laundry - that has just been sprayed and they say they think they are on a tropical island with sunshine and dolphins? Clearly, I'm am not the first or only person to think of this trick.
But what happens next in the commercial? The blindfold comes off and they realize the truth. My autumn fairies are replaced with dirty dishes piled high and grape juice on the floor that my three year old spilled while my eyes were closed.
Dishes are an issue for me. Some people don’t mind dishes. The warm water can be relaxing if it doesn’t make you have to go pee - and once I get started, I guess I’m ok - but the actual getting started part? The amount of psyching myself up it takes to get me to touch that grossness is comparable to the angst felt by the president himself when faced with the decision of pressing the RED BUTTON. More in some cases, I’m sure. I will do laundry, sweep the floor, change diapers, wash the toilet (the toilet mind you not the tub!) all with relative complacency, but the dishes? Those, I figure, can wait until my husband is off work… next Saturday.
Enter Apple Pot!
I figure this is a great solution so my kitchen will not smell like that green fuzz growing on the leftover cabbage from the New England boiled dinner I made last Monday. I mean… the cabbage is still there, as is the green fuzz. You can see it. but at least you don’t have to smell it. Simply close your eyes and there you go! You don’t have to think about it! Now you can think about other, more important, things... like the bloody nose you got from slipping in the grape juice and smashing into the door frame while your eyes were closed!
Do you see my point?
And we can have an apple pot for many things, not just our kitchens full of dirty dishes. We can cover our sadness or hurt with the “‘I’m-fine’-with-an-easy-smile” potpourri pot. Or cover our broken relationships with the “it’s-not-a-big-deal-we-don’t-need-help” pot. Then there is the multi-purpose “I-am-strong-I-can-handle-this” pot that is so convincing we even fool ourselves with it.
But the problem remains. It is only a cover. A blindfold. Open your eyes and the mess is still there and we’ve broken our nose.
My pot of apples is not a bad thing (the real one, not the figurative one). I will keep using it because I love the pretty smell, but those dishes in the sink will not do themselves. I must deal with the problem, not just cover it up.
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