Boxes and Boxes and Boxes of Crap

I have been the worst kind of pack rat for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to clearly see my future as a crazy old cat lady surrounded by piles of old magazines and boxes of weird objects. Being an “imaginative” (see also: slightly insane) crafter has always been one of the primary reasons for hoarding. Magazines can’t be thrown away because they can be used for collages. Worn, stained t-shirts might be too gross for Goodwill but they make nice rags, and the unstained bits can always find their way into a quilt. Then there’s the more unusual odds and ends.

I tend to be a bit nomadic, which is at odds with my inability to part with material possessions. When packing my belongings, I begin months before the actual move. And inevitably, in the last week, I find myself staring down a strange conglomeration of totally random and seemingly useless objects. A bent fork, a piece of silver rope, a pile of dominoes. So I grab a cardboard box, label it miscellaneous, and transport it to my new domain.

Though moving rarely happens more than once a year, this process also happens on a smaller scale every single time I clean. Small piles of bits and baubles gather on the corner of a night stand, only to be dumped into some nearby decorative box.

Though my initial intention is to use that poker chip on a scrapbook page, or give this profane plastic pencil topper as a gag gift, usually it just doesn’t happen. The boxes themselves remain intact, and have become their own collection. After years squirreling these “boxes of miscellany” I read a feng shui article that said the first and most important way to achieve good chi flow is cleaning out the clutter. The last 9 months of my life definitely indicate some serious blockages in my chi arteries. Time to open the little treasure troves and admit they are really boxes of junk.

I have to confess I am averse. Sure there’s my usual issue of fearing change. But also there’s an artistic composition to some of these boxes. Take out the contents, lay them out, and there seems to be a story. Sometimes it might be a confusing story, like why is there a purple plastic lobster next to an old retainer, but still it does ignite the imagination.

So, as I am prone to do when unable to preserve something physically, I am photographing a small sampling of these “boxes of miscellany” so that at least some documentation remains. Stock piling digital images is a bit more reasonable. And I don’t think it’s as likely to clog my chi.

Butter is the most important food.

One thing that most people know about me is that I love butter. I mean, really really love butter.

My borderline-psychotic obsession with this creamy yellow dairy product was inspired by my Belgian-German-Polish-Wisconsinite grandmother. As a child, she would fry sirloin steaks in butter, so they sat on the plate in a savory brown liquid with soft floating bubbles of grease. She would lather butter on chocolate poptarts fresh from the toaster until they were slick and shiny. She smeared a decent portion on the bun beneath any sausage, be it bratwurst or hot dog. To this day, these foods seem naked without cow’s gift to man. If a sane person would adorn a certain food with an only slightly unhealthy amount of butter, I am guaranteed to overdo it. Some of my favorite foods are meaningless by themselves. Rice, pasta, and popcorn are mere vehicles for the savory flavor of that pale yellow heaven.

If I run out of butter, I feel as though my entire kitchen is empty. I cannot cook without it. I am paralyzed by fear that whatever I make will taste horribly bland and dry and will look up at me sadly from the plate and beg for a smooth fatty puddle to enrich it.

This obsession makes me infamous among my friends. Any guy I’ve ever dated, any roommate I’ve ever lived with, and any friend that has ever accompanied me to a restaurant has recoiled in horror when witnessing my butter usage for the first time. At sea food restaurants, the tiny cup of melted butter is never enough. I let crab meat soak in the bright yellow liquid, using a fork to lift the meat still dripping into my mouth. Toast slices with diner breakfasts are always inadequately buttered. I recoil in horror when someone orders dry toast. The idea repulses me. What is the point of toast without butter? It seems as absurd as a life without love. I put butter on sandwiches that are also going to have mayonnaise on them. I put butter in chicken fried rice and pad thai. I put butter on any cooked vegetable on my plate. When someone serves me something, saying “it already has butter on it” I always add more.

I’ve tried to be discreet about my severe butter addiction. I add the few extra clumps of butter to my food when no one is looking, I hide the butter pad wrappers under my plate. But eventually everyone becomes suspicious when my whole plate glistens. And when they finally catch me putting table spoons of butter on a handful of cooked zucchini, they realize that I’ve been doing this all along.

The only place I draw the line is eating raw butter. Though I’ve heard stories of people eating a stick of butter coated in sugar like a candy bar, I couldn’t imagine. Though I admit that deep fried butter sounds delicious, and I’ve put away a sizeable amount of raw cookie dough that wasn’t much more than sugar and butter.

When I’ve lived alone, I’ve put away a pound of butter in a week. My cholesterol is, thankfully, still within a normal range for a young woman like myself. But of course eventually old age is going to catch up to me and I am going to be forced into a world of bland, dry food.

But until then I can take comfort in knowing that at least Paula Deen knows how I feel.