Stirring the Peanut Butter

I have been putting it off for more than a week, but I finally pulled myself together and stirred the peanut butter this morning.

You know how it is: there's something you have to do, and you know it's going to be a good thing in the end, but the process itself is kind of a pain and so you put it off, and then it somehow becomes more intimidating and more daunting to follow through on the project.

Stirring the peanut butter is just one example. We prefer all-natural chunky peanut butter and we buy it at Costco in the giganto size, which makes it very affordable. However, as any connoisseur of natural peanut butter knows, the peanut oil separates from the peanut solids in storage, and must be re-incorporated before the peanut butter can be used.

When you are dealing with a veritable vat of peanut butter, this process is more complicated. First, before I stir I like to pour off most of the excess peanut oil. The shape of the container makes it almost impossible to do this without getting peanut oil everywhere. Then again, it is difficult to find an implement that is long enough to reach the bottom of the vat, and is just wide enough to displace the peanut butter for effective stirring. If you choose the wrong tool you can end up with peanut butter all over the place; worse yet, you could find dense, unspreadable clumps of ground-up peanut at the bottom of the container at the end of the month. (Or however long it takes you to get through a vat of peanut butter).

So I put it off, and J puts it off, because nobody wants to be responsible for peanut clumps. And then you wake up on a Friday morning wanting a bagel for breakfast, and you had cream cheese on your bagel last Friday because you didn't want to stir the peanut butter, and you finally get all Nike all over the place and Just Do It. And seven minutes later, as you are enjoying your bagel with crunchy peanut butter, you wonder why on earth you have been denying yourself peanut butter for all this time.

As I stirred the peanut butter this morning, I was thinking about the other things that I have been putting off. We have had several bags of castoffs waiting to be donated; I must have moved those bags from room to room half a dozen times in the past two months. I finally took ten minutes to make an itemized list for tax purposes, and dropped them off at the mission yesterday. Likewise, I just got around to seasoning the lovely crepe pan I received as a Christmas gift. It wasn't difficult, but I was supposed to fry up some potato peelings in a little oil and God forbid I should peel a potato for the purpose! We had mashed potatoes for dinner the other night so I saved a few of the peels and seasoned the pan right then and there -- it took all of ten minutes. Guess what? We had crepes for dinner yesterday. And they were very good!

I am really good at the "Wouldn't-it-be-nice-if?" part of life and not so great at the "Let's-make-it-happen" part. Even when I can overcome my chronic indecisiveness to get something started, my desire for a perfect outcome makes it difficult for me to enjoy the process. After all, what if I were to ruin the crepe pan in my attempt to season it?

This year, my resolution is to follow through with good ideas and the resolutions I have made in the past. Starting this weblog with Amanda S. is one part of that follow through, a commitment to myself to spend more time writing. Tackling my long-unfinished sewing projects is another. I want to be able to give myself an "A" for effort, and to enjoy the process regardless of the outcome.

Although there had better not be any clumps in the peanut butter...