Sunday Morning Baking
8am on Sunday morning and I’m baking cookies. This is the only way we can get home baked cookies in July because turning on the oven when the outside temperature is three digits makes everyone miserable for the rest of the day (air conditioner can’t keep up.) I figured since I was already awake and since making cookies sounded nice, I might as well do it. Then we’ll have a good hour for the AC to restore comfortable temperatures before the world outside is too hot.
While I was baking cookies, I also cleaned up the kitchen. It feels good to make a small corner of our lives neat and orderly when so much of the house is jumbled. In fact I think the cooking area of the kitchen is the only public space in the house which doesn’t have extra furniture or stacked boxes in it. Even the bedrooms are somewhat impacted. All of this despite the fact that we have a rented storage pod out in our driveway to contain some of the clutter. It is going to take time to put the house to rights, but I can do the dishes and wipe the counter. It helps.
Yesterday Howard and I went to look at flooring. We have to make decisions about how to replace the flooring that was torn out. It was anxiety inducing to look at our options and try to pick something that we’ll have to live with for the next fifteen to twenty years. What if we choose wrong? What if we spend the money and then regret for a long time? Spinning on those thoughts leads to a mental paralysis. Then I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my teenage son earlier in the week. He was having an anxiety attack because he had twenty dollars to spend on a new game and was afraid of choosing wrong. I told him “go ahead and get it wrong.”
“but what if I get it wrong?” he repeated.
“What if you get choosing wrong… wrong? Wouldn’t that mean you accidentally chose … right?”
I saw the edge of a smile on his face, so I continued, “It would be so terrible to be accidentally right when you meant to be wrong.”
He managed to make a game selection, and judging from the fact that he’s been playing it non-stop for several days, I don’t think he got it wrong. Whether that means he succeeded or failed at what he attempted, doesn’t really matter since he has no regrets.
We chose flooring. Whether it will be right or wrong once it is installed, we have yet to see. Some day in the coming week I’ll have to place an order for the flooring. And I’ll have to make a dozen other decisions which will have long-term repercussions for our living spaces. Hopefully at the end of it all, we’ll like the new look of the spaces. For now, I have fresh baked cookies and a clean kitchen. It is enough.