Beater Mess

Beater Mess

I am standing by the front door with a group of children, nearly ready to leave with them to go someplace when my mother hands me a beater to lick.  It is thickly covered with super chocolaty batter.  One of the kids bumps me and the beater with its batter falls to the floor, which is covered with a very new and clean-looking rug.  I immediately pick it up, but a huge amount of batter sticks to the floor.  I say to the milling kids, be careful not to step in the batter, and one boy comes over and intentionally sticks his foot in the batter on the rug and then backs up, tracking it to the door.  He stands with his back to the door wiping batter from his foot on the door.  I am horrified by the mess, guilty and worried about getting it clean again, but I do nothing about it because I want to get the batter licked off the beater before I move to try to clean up.  I worry about the kids tracking through the mess and making it worse.  My mother reappears and the mess is miraculously cleaned up without a trace or stain.  I feel relieved but guilty that I didn’t help.  Tuesday, July 28, 2015

What does this remind you of?

I am reading the book, It was Me all Along, by Andi Mitchell, about food, over-eating, obesity, which was given to me by my daughter, Sara, for my birthday.  In the opening section, the author describes, among other things, licking raw cake batter from bowls and beaters.  Her mother gives her one to lick.  My mother did that too, and of course, I continued to do that as an adult.  Probably, reading It was Me All Along yesterday stimulated the dream.  I loved to lick beaters.  It’s one of the reasons I rarely bake anymore, because licking the beaters and the bowl etc. is so very tempting to me, even if I am cooking something I shouldn’t eat.  A huge discrepancy exists between what I would like to eat and what it is safe for me to eat with my allergies, food addictions and health issues.

I also have issues around messes, messes I make, and messes I have to clean.  I feel guilty about making messes and about not keeping things as clean as they “should be,” but I absolutely hate cleaning; it is one of my least favorite things in the whole world. (Although I do like things to be reasonably clean, neat and organized, getting them that way is not my forte.)  And I worry specifically about the expensive cream-colored rugs in our house, including under the dining-room table! (Seems so weird to have a rug under a place where people eat!)  The amount of batter on the dream beater was way out of proportion to what a beater could actually hold.  And it kept expanding, like the amount of anything sweet and chocolaty that I would want to eat if I ever allowed myself to do so.

In the dream, I also felt guilty that I had a beater to lick and none of the other kids did.  That didn’t seem fair, yet I was unwilling to give it up.  I have guilt about having things that other people don’t have and need, about not donating money to worthy causes, etc.

The boy who came over and stuck his foot in the batter reminds of my brother Robert and Graham, their contrariness, of which I have a large dollop as well.

On my recent trip to Syracuse and New Hampshire, I felt guilty that I did not help more with cooking and finances. Also sad that I lost time at Heidi’s dealing with the phone.