So, I finished my personal edits for the second book in my LOVE AND CHAOS SERIES, ROCKED BY LOVE and sent it to my first round editor. As many of you know, when I get near an end of a book, I get obsessive and everything else goes by the wayside, email, marketing, cleaning....
Then, once it's sent off, I play catch-up on all the things I've ignored. Yesterday that was cleaning out what our family calls "the lazy freezer" and the refrigerator. We call it the lazy freezer because we have a big upright freezer in the basement storage room, and when one doesn't want to walk the fourteen steps to it, you shove it in our side-by-side freezer, which makes it the lazy freezer.
Here are a few things that were disturbing in this endeavor. If you have a weak stomach, you'll want to stop here.
1) The things that were long expired ~ First, I'll show you a picture of the item that we'll call the runner-up. This bottle of Durkee's expired in 2018. It has clearly survived a few refrigerator purges.
But the big winner was the white cooking wine which expired in...2017! I'm sure the last time I cleaned the fridge I was like, "Come on. Does white cooking wine really even expire?" But I do have my limits, and three years means you don't make the cut even in my handbook!
2) The things that had been in there forever and weren't expired ~ I mean, what do they make this stuff out of if it takes ten years for it to expire? These maraschino cherries expire in 2022!
This hot sauce expires in 2024! I guess nothing could live in that stuff, including bacteria!
3) I had a piece of Bailey's chocolate cake in the freezer. I put it there because I gave up chocolate for Lent and St. Patty's Day fell during Lent. The thing that is disturbing is that a piece of Bailey's chocolate cake went to waste!
4) I found it disturbing when things foamed up when being pitched. They aren't supposed to do that.
And-
5) When things that were not wine smelled like wine while being pitched. This means they had crossed over into the fermentation process, and that ain't right.
Thanks for reading! I hope you don't have to go through this disturbing process any time soon! I wonder what I'll find when I finish writing Book Three of the LOVE AND CHAOS SERIES, ROCK IT TO THE MOON.
If we were to clean out your fridge right now, could you beat me? Or are you good about checking those dates on your condiments, etc.?
