Book and Home Notes

I oughta be up and buzzing around, doing all the things because it’s Saturday. But of course I’m not. I seriously relapsed this week into a deep level of tiredness, akin to that of when I was not taking the allotted amount of thyroid every day. Drug myself around with the idea that I was a functioning human, while all the while not really being a functioning human. Finally realized and took a long nap, and then went to bed early, and so maybe things are righting themselves.

The best part of the week was that, as I was sliding into this depressing collapse, I redid the children’s chore list, reassigning everyone to different jobs and domains. The change was much needed, and the children, amazingly, kept the house going while I did not. Elphine, having much free time on her hands now, launched herself into a baking frenzy. She made a layer cake, and then some sort of pie, and then scones. And one day she made lunch. Can’t remember the last time I had energy to cook all those things in a row. Right now she is downstairs clunking around, having another go at scones because she wasn’t completely satisfied with them. That’s really the kind of baker one wants to have–one who is never satisfied, who bakes a tray of something, tastes a corner, announces, ‘this is rubbish’ and goes back in the kitchen, leaving you to eat a whole platter of, as in the case of a dear aunt, the most gorgeous cinnamon sticky buns I’d ever tasted.

So, while she’s been baking away, I’ve been sitting at my desk pretending to catch up on ‘work,’ but really chatting with interesting people online, and reading articles and the first two chapters of Jen Pollock Michel’s Teach Us To Want. I love her question in the first chapter, “Is it true that the hardest, least desirable choice is the most obviously holy? Is it true that personal desire must never be trusted? Am I right to immediately incriminate ambition?” It’s like she’s living inside my head.

And then I love this description of motherhood, “Motherhood is exactly this petri dish where I culture the cells of my own mercurial character. One moment I’m tranquilly reading the Bible with my children at breakfast, and the next moment I’m losing my temper on account of the Hansel and Gretel crumb trail leading it’s way out of the pantry. Psychologically, I think they call this the dissociative identity disorder. Theologically, I think we call it the split personality of sin.”

In the garden we moved some roses around, and stood looking at our ant infested front hill, hoping that the neighbors won’t begin to complain while we try to figure how to make it look less like a wasteland and more like something as pretty as all of theirs. Gardening is slow work though, the results are never instantaneous.

But now I will arise and go about the business of the day, whether it ends up being cleaning all the things, or collapsing back into a chair to read something else interesting and wonderful. Have a lovely day!