My teeth nibble at the edges of my waffle.

From my childhood on, I have understood that the good stuff resides inside the crust. My toast crust is eliminated before I make my BLT. I first eat the top edge around a pie. I can then dive in to the yummy part. OK, I probably need therapy, but I know a good thing when I try it.

It occurred to me while eating my edgeless waffle, that life is crusty. You have to work through the hard stuff to get to the best parts. The rough edges need to be filed down or eliminated in order to find peace, hope and love. You can’t get to the good part without removing that crust that seems to be holding in the rough parts together.

Don’t tell me, I know. I go off on these weird thoughts often. My husband gets a lot of credit for being either entertained by me or just plain tolerant. But life is a mystery. Travailing it is not easy.

Sometimes the dormant parts become crusty. Marriages grow old. Living with a teenager builds up that protective crust. Living in these times makes me want to be an apple dumpling surrounded by a crust.

I’m reminded of my dad’s expression, “He was a crusty old man.” I had to check in with AI Overview; “He was a crusty old man” means he was an older person who was easily annoyed, grumpy or complaining.

It’s a way of describing someone who is irascible and possibly hard to get along with due to their age. The word “crusty” in this context implies a negative character trait, often associated with a lack of patience and a tendency to complain.

Seems to be the way I feel about the present times. I want to delete the irascible to get to the good parts of decency. I want to peel off that thing holding us in its grips.

Oh, once more I seem to be on a tangent that starts out with flour and shortening and ends up in a ruined pie. I thank those of you who stick with me and find something you can relate to in my ramblings. We are all in this together.

This morning I chewed the edge off my waffle and felt rather powerful. Perhaps I will try that in life.

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Pamela Loxley Drake is a Beaverton resident and self-described lifelong “farm girl.” You can contact her at pamldrake@gmail.com.