End in Sight
I dropped over 26 dozen cookies off at school today. I had declared it "Cookie Day" for Teacher Appreciation Week. No pictures--partly because I'm lousy about remembering to take pictures, and partly because I was pushing my deadline for the 10:55 first lunch so closely that the last batch was still warm and I parked illegally in a drop-off zone with my hazard lights on while I ran them in. Double batches of Peanut Butter Round-ups, Vanishing Oatmeal, and Chocolate Chip (with and with-out nuts,) and a pan of brownies, and a single batch of Toll House Cookies made with white chocolate chips and dried cranberries (I'm calling that experiment a success.)
Now I just need to provide lunch tomorrow and I'll be done with Teacher Appreciation Week for another year, and glad of it, too. I do sincerely appreciate my children's teachers, without whom I would have to homeschool, which wouldn't be entirely terrible, but we would be getting on eachother's nerves more often, and they would never learn math.
I had to share a passage from the book I have been reading in 11-12 minute spurts between putting cookies in and out of the oven. It's from "Shakespeare's Landlord" by Charlaine Harris, it's early in the book so I can't give you a lot of background, but the protagonist cleans houses, and is over at one of her client's apartments, helping her do a big Spring Clean:
"For three hours, we worked in the small apartment, cleaning things that had never been dirty and straightening things that had never been messy. Alvah likes her life streamlined---she would live well on a boat, I've always thought. Everything superfluous was thrown away ruthlessly; everything else was arranged logically and compactly. I admire this, having tendencies that way myself, though I'm not as extreme as Alvah. For one thing, I reflected as I wiped the cabinets in the bathroom, Alvah has such limited interests that cleaning is one of her few outlets for self-expression. Alvah does a little embroidery of an uninspired kind, but she doesn't read or sew and is not particularly interested in cooking or television. So she cleans. . . .Alvah is a warning to me."
I'm no Alvah. I wish I could regard cleaning as an outlet for self-expression. I would say I need to embrace my inner-Alvah-----but I just don't think she's in there.
Now I just need to provide lunch tomorrow and I'll be done with Teacher Appreciation Week for another year, and glad of it, too. I do sincerely appreciate my children's teachers, without whom I would have to homeschool, which wouldn't be entirely terrible, but we would be getting on eachother's nerves more often, and they would never learn math.
I had to share a passage from the book I have been reading in 11-12 minute spurts between putting cookies in and out of the oven. It's from "Shakespeare's Landlord" by Charlaine Harris, it's early in the book so I can't give you a lot of background, but the protagonist cleans houses, and is over at one of her client's apartments, helping her do a big Spring Clean:
"For three hours, we worked in the small apartment, cleaning things that had never been dirty and straightening things that had never been messy. Alvah likes her life streamlined---she would live well on a boat, I've always thought. Everything superfluous was thrown away ruthlessly; everything else was arranged logically and compactly. I admire this, having tendencies that way myself, though I'm not as extreme as Alvah. For one thing, I reflected as I wiped the cabinets in the bathroom, Alvah has such limited interests that cleaning is one of her few outlets for self-expression. Alvah does a little embroidery of an uninspired kind, but she doesn't read or sew and is not particularly interested in cooking or television. So she cleans. . . .Alvah is a warning to me."
I'm no Alvah. I wish I could regard cleaning as an outlet for self-expression. I would say I need to embrace my inner-Alvah-----but I just don't think she's in there.
posted by sherry at 1:58 PM
2 Comments:
Thank you so much for your lovely comments on my blog. They are probably some of the nicest I've ever gotten!
Is that your house in your profile pic? Whether it is or not, it's beautiful!
wah! my inner Alvah died in-utero apparently.
i clean because i MUST, with three boys and two cats and a dog and a husband. but if it were just me - i could and did get away with cleaning once a month or so, with spot-wipes as needed.
why clean when there's so much other fun stuff to do?
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