Monday Morning Gray

Here I lie, continuing in my post thanksgiving stupor. It is raining and the snow is slipping away, mercifully. The children are fractious and sad. Marigold just came bounding in to ask if it is Christmas. No, poor child. It's just Monday. Then she wanted to know what is for breakfast.

“I poured cornflakes,” said Matt, “they each have a bowl of cornflakes and a cookie.”

“!?” I said.

“I was worried about them having enough sugar” he said, “and we're out of sugar cereal.”

I suppose if I felt strongly enough about the unwisdom of this menu I could get up and sort it out myself, but marriage is a give and take, a letting of the other person be who he is without trampling him. If the husband does something nice, like getting up early to set out breakfast for the children, it isn't nice of me to question him. I know this is true because Moses just sent spies in to scope out the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey, perhaps even small cookies, and the spies brought back a bad report, not believing that the land was good enough and the Lord's arm long enough to defeat all their enemies. Feel horribly convicted by this.

Anyway, turning from that, the children are sad because their wonderful grandparents were here for two whole weeks and provided a whirlwind of dizzying fun–hot chocolate from Starbucks, the bookstore, ice skating, lunch out, movies, sugar, shopping for Chriatmas clothes and pjs and snow gloves, movies, puzzles, sugar, movies, sugar. There was much weeping yesterday when they drove away, and then more weeping as they have clunked into the cold hard reality of normal life. It's not only not Christmas, baby girl, it's advent, and that is a season of penitence, at least for you, and self reflection, and self denial. It's a nice long time for you to meditate on the wonders of the incarnation, God's unending mercy in not giving you what you deserve, which is oatmeal and a dark corner, instead showering you with a cookie and the opportunity to be useful in the service of others. That's called going and doing your chore.

I really don't like the word 'chore'. I wish we had had the presence of mind to pick another word, like 'job' or 'duty' or something. A chore is always something bad sounding, I think, but the jobs themselves aren't so awful. This last week I bailed Elphine out of the laundry, after firing her. I restored order to the whole laundry system. Then I took a lot of pictures. I think I might do a whole laundry post this week. Hopefully. I hope very much to do a whole laundry post. And I cleaned my bedroom. Both tasks were satisfying. But really, that was only the case because I wasn't trying to do fifteen other things. Trying to keep school going and the laundry is a true chore. Doing one and then the other is basically restful. Of course, during school time, you can't stop doing laundry. You have to keep at it. Or else everyone perishes.

Today I'm going out St. Nicholas hunting, and then I'm going to clean some more. The children, of course, will join me in the second chore. I will have to lie about the first and tell them I'm going to arrange for them all to have shots or something. Children have no sense of humor but I do my best to instill some anyway. Matt will bury himself in a pile of greek books and commentaries, trying to decifer the meaning of Paul's on going corrections of the Corinthians. I commend to you his sermon from yesterday, whenever he gets it up. He tackled the dicy and fraught subject of Married, hem, what shall I call it, Unpleasantness. All the children were sent out of church down to children's chapel. I know he wanted to join them but he gripped the pulpit and preached one of his best sermons ever. And after you listen to the sermon then you can go watch the Flight of the Conchords which was directed to my attention this weekend. Ha ha ha.

Just to reassure you, this is not that kind of blog. We here abide by a strict narrow way of embarrassment and denial. We just hope and pray that the subject just won't ever, hem, you know, arise, and when it does we pass quickly over it.

Where was I? Oh yes, well, it's cyber Monday, I've got tons to do. Have a lovely day!