Sunday, October 4, 2015


It's gray and overcast and slightly cool and I've made the pancakes which today are oat bran, apple, banana and cinnamon and all I want to do is get that garden planted. I have too many packets of seeds and I swear, I'm going to find all the old seeds and throw them out and go with all fresh and every year I think to myself, if I have faith but the size of a grain of mustard seed then my garden will grow and I plant the mustard seeds which look just like the collard seeds in case you didn't know and I plant those too.

There's this thing going around the Facebook about how meditative it is to wash dishes by hand and I laugh every time I see it. It's probably meditative to beat the sheets on rocks, too, but I sure don't want to do that either. I'd rather meditate while doing something in the yard than washing the dishes which, at this point in my life, I have lost all joy in doing. Sorry. And every day I am more than grateful, once again, for this dishwasher which accepts everything I put into it and gives everything back, clean and sparkling. I love my machines and I do not take them for granted whether they are vehicles or washing machines or this laptop which I call the magic box because it is.

There is, however, no machine to clean out the hen house and that is another thing I must do today. Chickens are not machines and thus, they poop and they poop a lot. There may be a machine to plant seeds but I do not have one and thus, my knees and arms and hands and back will suffice and in a way, our bodies are machines, miraculously made in most cases although I would like to check out the warranty to see if I can get some replacement parts sometimes. Age will wear down the gears and the joints and there will be rust and there will be occasional breakdown of it all, including the brain and if I put a pot of peas on the stove and then go into another room to do something, it is almost assured that I will at some point wander back into the kitchen to find the pot spitting and bubbling, having been forgotten the second I left it on the burner and walked out of the room.
Well, I haven't burned the house down yet.

And so it goes on a Sunday and the pancakes have now been eaten, the dishes are in the dishwasher, the iron skillets cleaned by hand, the coffee drunk, and it's time to wash some clothes, or more accurately, put them in the proper machine to be washed, and it's hard to get motivated with this gray, damp sky, wet cat-velvet day. I think it's going to be one of those days in which I do things but slowly, one step in front of the other, trying to keep my mind on what I'm doing instead of flying off into the void which it tends to do. Such a week it has been. One week ago today, the boys and Lily were out having pancakes with us and that seems like another lifetime ago. I mean- honestly. A whole other, other lifetime back in ancient days in an ancient land where there was a super moon, red, which became eclipsed and left the lands in darkness for a few moments. A time before this one.

There's my morning picture of little Gus, August Glinden, who slept while his mama whipped cream to put on the prune cake that I am told I made sometime last week,

which I have a vague memory of doing, it's all going too fast and I am expecting to get those seeds in the ground, the size and shape of mustard seeds, and I can see myself having to jump back as the plants explode in time and space and tonight we shall have fresh arugula salad for our supper.

Not really.

But almost.

Love...Ms. Moon


  1. Delicious post. Love this level of description and heart.

  2. Apologise to no one for not enjoying washing up. Pff.

    Little Gus Puddin'.

  3. I read an article about 24 years ago in Utne Reader -- right after it launched -- about the meditative qualities of dishwashing. I've always remembered it and I get it, I do. But it can be equally meditative to just rinse the dishes and put them in a dishwasher, I think.

    Gus already looks bigger, more of a sentient individual. Golly, I am so behind on everyone's blogs!

  4. August aka Gus. Owen. Gibson. Awesome names.

  5. All of us women of a certain age enjoy the modern appliances because we remember when there was only a washing machine in the bathroom with a hand wringer. That was it! Until the iceman stopped delivering ice and we finally had to breakdown and buy a refrigerator. If we could afford it. Which we couldn't for a couple of years. (And, which my mother called an icebox till the day she died.)

    But you, my dear, are the only person I know who can wax so poetically about a dishwasher!

    Have a great week!~

  6. I think it probably another lifetime before baby Gus arrived. Babies have a way of changing the way the earth rotates.

  7. Rebecca- Thank you, m'am!

    Jo- I don't. Trust me.

    Steve Reed- Babies change so much in the first few weeks. It's just crazy.

    Angella- Not quite sure what he's going to be called but I do like "Gus" a lot.

    Peace, Thyme- Well, we always had a refrigerator when I was growing up but it wasn't until I was in high school that my mother got a dishwasher. I have had my own before but not for many years.

    Birdie- Ain't that the truth!

  8. we had our usual late breakfast tho later than usual and I puttered in my yard all day.

  9. I love washing the dishes by hand, unless there's a shit ton of them! Then I put them in the electric china cabinet and wait til it's full! LOL!
    That little Gus is delicious.


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