Last fall I visited my mother and entered the house to the luscious, comforting smell of roasting chicken.
On the three hour drive home the next day I kept thinking about that chicken and what I could do with the leftovers. Enchiladas. Crepes. Pot pies. Tetrazzinis. Soups. My mouth watered and my mind wandered all the way home.
The next time I bought groceries I bought a chicken, but then the inevitable business of life got between it and getting it into the oven. One night I got home too late. Another night we ate out. I began thinking that maybe I needed to put it in the crock pot, but my mornings proved just as harried as my evenings.
The chicken languished in my fridge for a while. A week? Two? I'm not sure. Over time, I forgot about the chicken in the bottom bin of the fridge. What finally brought it back into my consciousness was a smell. The smell wasn't overpowering. It was just a teensy, tiny bit off, but it was definitely off.
Here I will admit that most of you are smarter than I am. Most of you would have known what to do if you'd have taken one whiff of a chicken that's sat in solitary confinement for so long. Your offending chicken would have gone directly into the trashcan. But not mine.
Call me over optimistic. Or cheap. Or stupid. Or a combination of all three, but I didn't throw away my smelly chicken. I decided that maybe, just maybe a day in the crockpot would kill whatever was making that chicken smell bad.
On the three hour drive home the next day I kept thinking about that chicken and what I could do with the leftovers. Enchiladas. Crepes. Pot pies. Tetrazzinis. Soups. My mouth watered and my mind wandered all the way home.
The next time I bought groceries I bought a chicken, but then the inevitable business of life got between it and getting it into the oven. One night I got home too late. Another night we ate out. I began thinking that maybe I needed to put it in the crock pot, but my mornings proved just as harried as my evenings.
The chicken languished in my fridge for a while. A week? Two? I'm not sure. Over time, I forgot about the chicken in the bottom bin of the fridge. What finally brought it back into my consciousness was a smell. The smell wasn't overpowering. It was just a teensy, tiny bit off, but it was definitely off.
Here I will admit that most of you are smarter than I am. Most of you would have known what to do if you'd have taken one whiff of a chicken that's sat in solitary confinement for so long. Your offending chicken would have gone directly into the trashcan. But not mine.
Call me over optimistic. Or cheap. Or stupid. Or a combination of all three, but I didn't throw away my smelly chicken. I decided that maybe, just maybe a day in the crockpot would kill whatever was making that chicken smell bad.
Instead, I came home that evening to a house filled with a stench that made me want to retch before I even got in the door. The crockpot had helped that smell multiply a thousand times over. I took the crock out and dumped its contents into the garbage, opened every window in the house and turned on every fan. We ate out that night.
A chicken is just a chicken unless you're a writer or a teacher. Then, it's liable to become a metaphor or an object lesson. What part of your life is just a teensy, tiny bit off? What failures are you holding onto in the hopes that someday you can make good on them? Sometimes it's smart to recognize that a situation or relationship isn't going to get any better, and it's time to stop it before it gets any worse.
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