FILLING THE CANISTERS

Did you ever have one of those days? No matter how much effort you make and no matter how hard you push and no matter how you race around … in the end there is nothing to show for all your effort. Mother used to call them FILLING THE CANISTER DAYS. When you are done with a day like that, there is nothing to indicate you did anything. All the racing around was in an effort to stay even! They are the days when you are exhausted from doing what would appear to be nothing!

Almost all housework falls under this heading. And when your free time is nibbled away with things like filling ice cube trays, doing laundry, taking out the recycle, changing lightbulbs, emptying the dishwasher, and of course grocery shopping … well there really is a quid pro quo sense that you have earned a reward. So while at the market, you toss in a roll of digestive biscuits, a little chocolate bar here and there, some jiffy pop popcorn for later on, and maybe a bag of those really remarkable corn puff thingies … all are well earned, and you say to yourself … go ahead, you deserve them.

The problem, of course is that when all of those nice tasty rewards come home and take up residence in your pantry, you are at the mercy of their siren song each evening as you veg out over random TV. So now, instead of feeling virtuous and noble for all your hard work, you climb aboard the guilt train and trundle off to the black hole of regret, with the result that the next day you spend being super active and racing around in an effort to burn off all the useless calories, and guilt. So once again you have not much to show for a days work, and a pile of those other irritating housework chores still left to be done at the end of the day.  And of course the faint aroma of microwaved popcorn will linger along with all of the wrappers and bags of crumbs as evidence

Bummer … but at least the chocolate was worth it!