I have a tendency to let things linger WAY beyond expiration dates in the fridge. I keep pushing iffy items to the back of the shelves hoping that they will vaporize spontaneously and eject clean containers onto the counter for me to put away. Some of the worst stuff, not that green odoriferous fuzzy isn't awful, are spills that adhere to the glass surfaces.

I have spent hours soaking, scrubbing and scraping congealed combinations of syrup and ketchup with a Pepsi chaser out of cracks and crevices. YUCK.

So this has me thinking. Which is always kind of a frightening thing.

Have you ever seen a bitter mask encase a face? There's nothing like it. A couple of years ago (or way longer) there was a commercial about beer and some whacked-out rubber-faced guy took a sip out of a can and convulsed into a "bitter beer face.

I'll never forget the first time I saw it really happen to someone I was talking with. A friend was describing a hurt she'd experienced years ago. A dozen or more years ago. Not to make light of her pain, pain is pain, after all, but the incident she described left me scratching my head.

The wound was a stupid and mean-spirited comment tossed out by a selfish person. Wrong. Selfish. Mean. Yes. But something that deserved to be labeled as above, not consumed by my friend so that it sat in her stomach causing emotional indigestion for over a decade.

As my friend described this scene, her face changed. It morphed into a tight, squinty-eyed frown and her voice warbled as her emotion ramped up into full blown anger. I could almost see her blood pressure rise.

Life is too short. Selfish and clueless people are too plentiful.

If you have someone who raises your blood pressure in a bad way, do yourself a favor and figure out why, then do what you can to forgive, build protective barriers, or stop answering the phone when that number pops up in your caller ID.

While you're at it, go clean out your fridge, or come on over and I'll let you have a go at mine.