Tag Archives: homemaking

My Ambition For The Day Is To Put Away The Laundry: Everyday Magic, Day 118

Posted on November 13, 2010 | Comments Off

Some Saturdays turn vividly into true sabbaths for me, days of rest called to the forefront because I simply don’t have the energy to do anything else. After a week of waking up wickedly early for me (7:30, but hey, I was helped by the time change), doing a whole lot of yoga and working rather efficiently without a glitch, I’m all puckered out.

I thought of going to a movie, but too much effort! I have a vague sensation that I should clean the house, but that’s also out of my reach. I sit in my bedroom, having accomplished only the making the bed so far, and wait until I can summon up the energy to put away several baskets of folded laundry. At the same time, I know that just listening to the stillness and slowness called for is actually what I should be doing. So I’ll aim my sights toward the laundry but first, a nap where the sun sleeps on the bed right next to the cat.

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What Will You Do With Your One Wild & Precious Hour?: Everyday Magic, Days 112-113

Posted on November 7, 2010 | 1 Comment

I double-dipped on the extra hour by coming back from New York earlier this week and picking up the extra hour I left by the gate when flying out of the central time zone, and now today, another extra hour! To paraphrase Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” that ends with the question, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” here’s what we’re doing at our house:

  • Miyako, the little cat, is spending her extra hour attacking Judy, the big cat, in the ongoing war of being our home’s top cat. Since Judy attacked Miyako mercilessly when Miyako was younger, it’s payback time. We do break up the fights whenever we can.
  • Mariah, the dog, is sleeping.
  • Forest is catching up on homework.
  • The front porch is dreaming of purple flowers.
  • I’m going to clean the basement because, if the house is the metaphor for the life and the body, then the basement is either first chakra or the soul, and it needs major tidying.
  • Ken is planning to write an article for Blue Sky Green Earth.
  • The wind is up and running, doing its own version of the New York marathon in Kansas.
  • The hedge apple tree over our parking place is going to drop its final osage oranges after already breaking Ken’s windshield.
  • The apples on the counter are bathing in sunlight, unaware of how they may just be baked later on.
  • The greenhouse is begging us to water all the plants just moved in from the outside.
  • The big red rock on the side of the drive is considering its options.
  • The refrigerator is dancing a jig when no one is watching.
  • A doe is planning to walk through our swing set area to survey the bird feeder up ahead where she’ll return all winter to snack on fallen seed.
  • Several flocks of blackbirds are migrating a little further today.
  • The sewing machine and pile of fabric are singing out to me to give them a life for a while.
  • The laundry is dreaming of transformation.

So that’s the news on our plans here. How will you use your one and precious hour?

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Furniture-Moving Therapy: Everyday Magic, Day 53

Posted on September 6, 2010 | 1 Comment

After several weeks of ebbing through a respiratory infection, and over going under the waves for long stretches of blurred-dream sleep or half-awake gentle floods of images, I’m finally on the mend. While the antibiotics, supplements, rest and beef broth all helped, what also aided me was the simple and happy act of moving furniture from one place to another and thus making the old spaces new again.

I began with hauling my desk into Natalie’s room so that I finally have an office in an actual room rather than the through-way of our music/playroom (that links the upstairs to the downstairs, where all manner of video and screen type distractions abide). Then I hauled chairs from other rooms to the music/playroom to make a cozy place to sit and read or stare out at the sky. Finally, I moved other chairs to where the moved chairs were.

For years, whenever I moved anything, my kids, especially Daniel, would flip out just a little because now what was familiar wasn’t. Although we adopted the family motto of “We fear all change,” that never stopped me from occasionally rearranging the pieces in the body of the house.

Because I had limited energy, I would butt and haul something, collapse on my bed for 20 minutes, then get up and butt and haul something else. To be honest, this little re-arranging took about three days, but it was a welcome distraction from the I’m-going-to-jump-out-of-skin-if-I-don’t-get-well-fast fevers that overtook me. So now something old is someplace new, and in its landing, I’m landed into a greater sense of patience with my recovery.

Pictures: Old desk in new room; old chairs in new place; old husband in newly-slip-covered chair. Voila!

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Clean Bed, Clear Head: Everyday Magic, Day 41

Posted on August 24, 2010 | 2 Comments

Anne told me that each morning she makes her bed as soon as she gets up, advised by a yoga teacher who told her, “Clean bed, clear head.”

Although it’s such a simple thing, it caught me by surprise. “Why make the bed?” I thought to myself about, say, 40 years ago. After all, I was just to get back into it and mess it up again. Yet for the past 25 years, I have made the bed right before sleep each night because my regular sleep-thrashing.

I starting making the bed first thing about 20 days ago, and my head is clearer. When I walk into my bedroom, even if other parts of the room are chaotic, there’s a kind of order and beauty at the room’s center now. It’s also a way to honor the place I go each night to dream myself or be dreamed to parallel cities, long excursions, or the difficulty (as in last night) of packing a bunch of hideous antiques that belonged to my grandmother for travel when the airlines charge so much for each suitcase. No matter, the bed is made. The day is ready. And as I smooth the sheet and blanket across the mattress, I’m hearing and clearing myself at once.

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Breaking the Mold

Posted on December 12, 2008 | 3 Comments


It started with underground rivers of salty water left over from the days when Kansas was part of a large inland ocean. At our house, we draw our water from 200 feet down, right from the core of one of these underground rivers. When we mix such salt water with metal piping, over time, of course there’s erosion. That erosion led to a small leak under the kitchen sink where, unfortunately, we had a pile of newspapers to be recycled. Over months, it turned into layers of mold (mostly green mold, as I’m now learning, but still potent enough that we’ve had frequent colds lately).

Now, within a few days, the kitchen will be taken apart by some mold restoration folks, the air cleaned and exchanged seven times, boards and walls sanded down or replaced, counters removed and doors taken off. The air and mold guy tested the air, found enough evidence of mold under the boards and walls under the kitchen sink, and left us with a somewhat startling report and a big square of dark chocolate (in a mold of his company’s name). Now we’re facing our kitchen plastic-ized off with some kind of plastic-ized door and a lot of dining out for a few weeks (covered, remarkably, by insurance).

Within a week, we should be completely and thoroughly mold-free. By the end of the year, the restoration should be done, but it’s still tricky in looking at an in-tact part of this home and knowing it will be turned inside-out. Breaking the mold. Knocking it down and building it back up again. Re-making home. I exhale, tell myself the only way out is through, and turn the new air purifier on high. May the end of this year bring new breath into all of our lives.

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