It was beautiful really. A Pinterest moment, if you will. Saturday morning, 6:30 AM, getting a jump on the day. Boiling the chicken, cooking the square eggs for the breakfast sandwiches, prepping the kitchen. All signs indicated it was gonna be a perfect meal prep day. I was on point. Had the list, groceries ordered, containers sorted, etc. Give me some kitten heels, a strand of pearls, and an apron and I was June f-ing Cleaver. It truly was adulting at its finest. I was at the top of my game. 51 years old, pushing through the AC situation (it was OUT that day, in June, in Charleston, SC), staying home on a Saturday, making little containers of food that match and look pretty in the refrigerator all in an effort to rescue my lunch budget from the clutches of King Street. Well, my friends, you know the old adage "Pride cometh before the fall"?
Let's just say that this day did NOT go as planned and fall, I did!
There were no groceries. The groceries were not delivered as promised by the handy little app on my phone. It’s a really long convoluted story but the abridged version is that I ordered the groceries for delivery and they never came. Spoke with customer service. They were running behind and would have to be pushed to Sunday. This was fine, until it wasn't. Sunday morning came and went with no grocery delivery. By this time my co-prepping friends and I decided to wait until the AC was repaired on Monday and reconvene after work. I canceled the delivery after multiple calls to customer service and reordered the groceries to pick up the following evening. Never happened. Apparently my store has stopped doing grocery pick up for the next two or three weeks. Which is fine. I get it. Understaffing issues and all. But it might be a wee bit more helpful if during these weeks, they wouldn't allow you shop the groceries, schedule a time, and actually pay for the groceries if they are not offering the service. This is a rant I just cannot get into right now. They couldn't confirm but said the order may have been transferred to a Walmart much further from my home. I didn't want to have wasted their time if the order was ready, so I go and I wait. I called the number on the sign in Pick Up lane 6 multiple times to no avail and finally, I can take it no longer. I cancel the order YET AGAIN, peel into the parking lot, drift into a parking space in front of store, turn the air on for my dog, take the extra key, leave the car running, and go in to Walmart to shop. 30 minutes later I have all the things and head out to the parking lot only to find that the extra key is NOT tucked safely in my pocket. Y'all. This moment, standing at my locked running car, with my dog staring at me like I took the last bite of chicken, heart racing from the 16 mile sprint I had just made around the store... THIS moment. I have no words to describe this moment. I took a deep breath, pushed the cart back into the store, left it at customer service, and went key hunting. Thankfully... by some miracle, the key was at the self checkout. I have no idea how, but I am just so glad I didn't have to retrace all those steps!
(I do realize that this whole thing could have been avoided by just canceling on Saturday and running to the store. I also own the fact that "the principle of the thing" was driving the ridiculous refusal to do so. Trust me, I know. I spend much time unraveling the webs I weave in this head of mine.)
Groceries were secured, food prep reschedule was successful as both of the friends who were joining me were already at my condo halfway into a bottle of wine, and I was on my way...to a parking space at the back of the lot. This is really the kind of thing that I should keep to myself, but here we go. I pulled my emergency wine key out of my purse, opened a freshly purchased chilled bottle of wine, poured some into a coffee cup, and took a few minutes to breathe and sip. You can just call it my own little mini happy hour. I absolutely love little rebellious moments and the way they provide an instant, albeit a bit devious, feeling of sweet, sweet celebratory joy.
Like I just won something big and no one else knows. It is the best.
Needless to say, by the time I got home it was late, we were hungry, and there was no neat little list or plan. Basically, we chopped, prepped, ate, drank, and made a MESS. Even with multiple rounds of cleaning up throughout the night, this picture is what my kitchen looks like right now, Tuesday morning at 7:30 as I am running late for work. This does not evoke the blissful feeling I usually get when I meal prep. Quite the opposite actually. Maybe if I wish real hard, Anna (the chihuahua) will grow opposable thumbs and magically clean this up before I get home. I want to experience what it feels like to adult to the supreme level of having beautifully homemade meals stacked up in my work fridge to just grab and eat…Tomorrow. Today is Tuesday and this evening we will, once again, gather after work to finish. At this rate, the meals will last me through the weekend! Alas, the effort was not a total loss as I do have grapes, snack mix, and leftovers from Sunday lunch to take to work with me today. In the fridge, I have two different meals that are partially complete. Meatballs and sauce with zucchini noodles and chicken taco wraps with salad. My hope is I will be able to enjoy these yummy lunches before the end of the week or at least before the food goes bad!
Call it irony or the universe just chuckling in my face but the podcast episode I am obsessing over right now is titled "Just Being Seen as Imperfect." It's from season 2 of "Just Being" with Shauna Van Bogart. I’ll include it below because it really is worth a listen.* In the mean time, here is a portion I have practically had on a loop today.
"What takes the place of control, once you release it, is trust.
Trust is a necessary component to staying in the flow of effortless abundance in life and business. Trust and acceptance go hand in hand, because trust without acceptance is denial. I'm going to say that one again. Trust without acceptance is denial.
When the failed launch happens or when the launch happens and it's disappointing . It did not meet the intentions or the goals that you'd set and you go into a place of, 'Well, I can just fix myself or heal my money blocks or let me go in internally and see what was in my way. Maybe I wasn't in alignment enough.' When you come at it from a being whose automatic reaction to that is, 'Oh I must still be broken and that's why I didn't get the results that I want'. You are not in a place of acceptance, you are in a place of problem solving. And so, if you say to yourself the next time, 'I trust that it's gonna to happen. I trust it's gonna happen,' but you are still in a being that is fixated on solving a problem, you are in denial, and trust without acceptance is denial. And that is a hard place to manifest from."
One of the habits that is part of the work I do with my clients is Acceptance. It is, in my opinion, the most important habit as it is the root of any solution, mindset shift, or even celebration. So any time I hear someone speaking on it, I soak it all in. Remember earlier when I detailed the moment when I realized I didn't have my key and couldn't get into the car? The moment I could put no words to? That moment could have easily - and justifiably - tipped me over the edge. I could have allowed it to overwhelm me and put me in a "mood." But as I sat in my car, drinking in the silence and sipping a little wine, I thought to myself,
"It is what it is? So what are we going to do about it?"
A question that is practically a mantra in conversations with myself. This time, I answered wisely. I can assure you this is not always the case. "We are going to give this self-perpetuated frustration a couple minutes to exit the car and we are going to leave it here in this parking lot. We are going to turn on The Cure’s ‘Disintegration’ album and then we are going to go home, throw the tidy little plan in the trash, make a cocktail, and have fun with our son and friend who are meal prepping with us."
And that is exactly what we did. A night that could have been full of frustration and cut short, with all of my weight leaning into the negative, ended up being several hours of cooking, laughing, sharing stories, listening to music, and really having a great time together. Definitely made a memory we will be talking about for quite some time.
Even if we didn't actually finish making a single meal.
*Here’s the link to the “Just Being” podcast. There is also a game changing analogy comparing a rollercoaster and a carousel near the end. You definitely need to take 33 minutes out of your day an hear the whole thing.
Note: If you see a picture of perfectly packaged meals in this post it will be because we finally finished! :-)
This blog is a personal collection of my thoughts, wins, losses, memories, and crossroad moments. Almost all of which were hashed out around my kitchen counter and in my journals. If any of it resonates with you and you are ready to free-up the hidden badass you ARE right now, I can help. It’s time… Click the link and Let’s chat.
