Confessions of a Freezer Hoarder

It's safe to say that people like me should not own freezers that require periodic defrosting. It's not that I forget. On the contrary, I remember every time I open that freezer and I think to myself, "I really should defrost this sometime." But "sometime" is elusive. I've never come across some time for "sometime." So, as usual, sometime came to me as it always has in the history of my owning this needy freezer. The breaker flipped and here I am with the task of finding various ways to cook deer meat and use 50 pounds of nuts and seeds. And of course, there is the cleaning out of the five-year-old corn and mixed vegetables that I needed to stock up on...which are now solidified at the bottom of the freezer in one convenient package of ice, tapioca flour, meat guck, and some other substances of unknown origin.

For a brief deluded moment, I thought I might take a picture of the spectacle, but decided that I'd rather go ahead and write the thousand words so as to paint the picture to my liking and save myself a little dignity. Yet, my compulsion to honestly convey reality is seeming to be the undoing of that dignity I'd so love to preserve. A picture might have been a kinder messenger after all!

But it's not just the ghastly state of my frozen food artifacts that I fear would quickly sell out my dignity if memorialized in a photograph. It's the items themselves contained in my freezer. Much more than frozen food artifacts, there are some frozen artifacts of the bizarre kind. Dare I share? Let's just say, if it nourishes a baby so well for nine months, wouldn't it work wonders on a newly planted baby tree? It's the ultimate in recycling. And to my defense, my midwife recommended saving it. Too bad we never remembered the forlorn frozen something when we actually planted trees. Seven years in the freezer. Poor placenta.

But the freezer is now clean again. Ready for another seven or so years of accumulating ice and oddities. And with another baby on the way, who knows...