Today I was wandering the house in search of  inspiration when I decided to write about the first two things that caught my eye.  One was a dirty crock pot.  Kicking myself, I realized it held yesterday’s dinner that I had left to cool off before refrigerating and then promptly fell asleep, leaving the contents to spoil.  The other was the bright red hummingbird feeder dangling from a hook outside the back kitchen window.  Both items, unrelated, except by proximity.  And now that they have my attention, both represent the fact that there is a nudge of guilt and condemnation associated with each vessel.  I think to myself, hmm … these would normally be bringing me joy.

First the crock pot.  A marvelous invention for working Moms and because stay at home Moms are also working their tails off,  I include in my definition of working Moms, all Moms.  We all work hard and crock pots are an emblem of multi-tasking on steroids if there ever was one.  The ability to say “I’m washing my hair AND also cooking a healthy and inexpensive dinner for my wonderful family” is like no other.  The fact that we’re probably washing the dog, the floor, the car mats, and yesterday’s baked on crock pot container notwithstanding, crock pot cooking makes one feel good in a way clean hair alone never could.  And an added bonus is that no matter the quality of food going into a crock pot, it’s usually going to make your house smell candle-scented, pot-roast fresh, unless of course, you fall asleep and forget to remove the contents until the next morning.  Even as I write this, I’m thinking of my next crock pot, “fill the house with great smells”, chicken dinner. 

Great.  so on to the hummingbirds.  No, I have not discovered a way to mix hummingbird food from natural ingredients and let them simmer to perfection in my crock pot.  But I am pretty sure someone, somewhere out there, has done just that, and they probably have a Pinterest page devoted to it.  Well the first thing I’ve learned is that my pretty red hummingbird food is probably KILLING the hummingbirds or at the very least subjecting them to red dye # (fill in the number) poisoning.  I can already see John Travolta starring as the dynamic and passionate lawyer defending the birds:  ” … and when did you first learn about red dye”, and “where did you purchase said dye”, ” please remember you took an oath!” ,  “..  did it ever occur to you that you were harming the birds?”, and me replying, humbly, with my most effusive tactics: “sir, it’s not that I don’t disagree with you, but I really thought that the red dye of my youth was a problem they solved back in 1984,  uh, June, to be exact. I seem to recall reading about it in the uh,  Post, yeah, the Post …” . This ought to send every paralegal in my imaginary, made-for-TV movie scrambling, I think, smiling.

Crock pots and hummingbird feeder guilty verdicts aside, I normally find an abnormal amount of joy in both vessels.  Crock Pot dinners usually do turn out great and make the house smell good, and have plenty of  hearty leftovers for freezing.  Hummingbird feeders are a delightful addition to the back yard and when I follow the directions and correct timing, I can see the great migration as the birds travel to past my house along the Mexico to Canada highway. Its marvelous to me that hummingbirds and butterflies seem to have discovered the best way across north America long before the rest of us did.

So  I see the connection both stationary items have to inner joy.  With little prep time, and good timing, both the crock pot and the feeder, bless their little non-existent stationary-object hearts, make the world a better place, make MY world a better place. They are two minor, unrelated, well, maybe a little related, items that make our house feel like a home.  They are vessels representing the good things in life,  especially in the joy you get as a result of filling them with the best ingredients. I laugh to myself, thinking how unrelated these two items  are and yet how much alike in the role they have in my home. I don’t have a clue how hummingbirds find the feeders or how the food particles combine when simmered to make things more flavorful.  I don’t have a clue about Heaven either. But I secretly hope should I be blessed to arrive there one day, that there will be at least one simmering crock pot and plenty of hummingbird feeders.  I imagine the hummingbirds have already discovered the best way there.

(lwr Oct 5, 2017)