Granny Fricket's Thicket

It is November (crap… I completely blanked on it being NaNoWriMo) and November is “gratitude” post month. I mean, hey, it is totally cliché, why not?

I belong to a local recycle/upcycle/reuse group where people post things they are looking to divest themselves of for people that might be interested in to try to get lucky enough to get the stuff. Often as not, if there is something that I really really really could use (really) I end up getting it.

When I get it home (often as not) the thing is either dirty or worn in ways that mean it isn’t really useable or it is flat out broken. If you can get someone else to cart off your stuff, you don’t have to feel bad about being the one who throws it away.

Sometimes people are honest about it not working… snowblowers… mowers… refrigerators… coffee pots… “This doesn’t work but maybe someone who is talented that way can fix it”.

Some of the things we have gotten have been a God/Goddess send. Honestly, there have been times I’ve asked for things (most recently neck ties) and I’ve gotten amazing kindness. Sometimes people will post that they have groceries (either stuff they don’t like/don’t want/can’t use or things that are either really close to the use by date or are just past that date) and I have been blessed to be on the receiving end of them.

Recently I got lucky enough to get a small (shoe box sized) storage box full of cookie cutters. There were amazing cutters that I had never seen before. Leaves… bats…. three sizes of start… fun cutters. Got them home and started to look at the treasures. There were memories of cookies past stuck all over at least half of them. Not just a little… STUCK on grease and dough. I spent an hour scrubbing all of the nooks and crannies to get all of the sticky grease off.

Cleaning them probably would have have been easier if I had been able to use the hot hot hot setting on a dishwasher but the dishwasher hasn’t worked in a couple months.

It is oddly soothing and therapeutic to hand wash dishes (most of the time), but as I was washing these cookie cutters I started to think about why someone who planned on using them again when they put them away would have put them away with stuck on cookie schmutz all over them.

I feel guilty when I am on the giving them away side of things if I think there MIGHT be dust somewhere that I missed… I try to make sure that nothing (even forks) get put away with anything on them. I just scratch my head over things some times.

Love and Light
Granny