Domesticity

Earlier this week, I sat at the kitchen table and turned a Peeps chick costume into a goldfish for Evelyn to wear on Halloween and bespangling Paige's store-bought-but-not-fancy-enough butterfly. I sat sewing and hot glueing, thinking of how my mother did the same for me. It ate up my whole day, but I did manage to squeeze in a few loads of laundry, eat left overs from the party, address several lingering home repair issues with our contractor and pay the bills. I thought, as I sewed on the glittery fish lips, how I don't miss the work world. I don't miss office politics, face time, deadlines forced down your throat, long hours toiling on things you don't feel passionately about, and backstabbers and jerks not to mention the additional elements of blackberries, staining every hour with their vibrating beckoning emails and vms. My biggest task-master now has a dinner roll bum that she shakes and lets me pinch and I don't have to worry if it's appropriate. My lips are chapped from kissing her cheeks all day. It is a GREAT vocation. I sure should have chosen a career path for which I felt more passionately, but I was motivated by the short-term but pressing need for financial independence. And, obviously, without that short-sighted path I would not have met Al and therefore not had these babes whom I adore...

My friend Liz infected our house with this yummy "Amish friendship bread" starter. It all started innocently enough, with her saying it was a fun little science project for the kids in the kitchen. You knead one ziploc bag of goo every day, feed the yeast, then bake on day ten, handing off five offspring yeast babies to your friends. Well, she must have known that I am the kind of person who cannot let a thing die (whether it be a volunteer plant in my garden or a yeast starter in my kitchen) and this dang stuff multiplies like rabbits -- or a bad chain email, and you know I don't forward those on. So now I am in the midst of my umpteenth batch of friendship "bread" which I have relabeled CAKE on account of the copious sugar and oil employed in its dough. I am now doing a sort of October-inspired spice/carrot cake. Yesterday I made a whole batch into a cake for a belated Nana birthday celebration. Today I am baking madeleines of the slightly-spiced cake for all three schools. It makes the most happy smell in our house. Plus I get to wear an apron, the penultimate homemaker accessory, second only to the real straw broom we acquired at the Nantucket Folk Arts Festival this summer.

This year might be my year of doing things fantastically wrong. I am trying things I've never done before. Failing with reckless disregard for my pride. It is something akin to a freefall. Today I substitute taught for 1.25 hrs for a Kindergarten class. I think I should get a C-. Yes, I was run over by several 6 yr olds with aplomb. Oh well, I'm exhausted and I'd throw myself back in the ring in a heartbeat (with a little more info on the impose-able consequences for naughtiness). All is right with the world again because Al came home early, Cinda mailed us a lovely classic book, I baked an herb-skinned free-range chicken, and we will go to bed complete. Well, almost complete...

We have the aged cat. We added a tank of fish last month. Now we are looking seriously at bringing home a puppy.
Oh my.