Living Simply or Simply Living ?
Saturday, April 29, 2006
I have been spending a lot of time with family this week. Even more than usual. Let's begin with last Sunday...Mr. C's parents came over to spend the afternoon and stay for dinner. It was decided that Mr. C and his father would take our son on his first fishing trip, and Mr. C's mother and the babe and I would stay back at the house. I rarely enjoy the company of my mother-in-law because she is awkward to talk with and has an obsessive compulsive disorder which involves cleanliness. She scans my house in every corner for specks of dirt and fiddles and twitches. The babe was wearing dark corduroy pants which acted like a lint brush as he crawled across the rugs. Got those off him quick, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to hold him.
All was going rather well until the babe, who was sweetly sitting on her lap, decided to grab for her ear, and pulled her earring out. The earring dropped from his fingers and into the crack in the side of the upholstered chair. She put her fingers down the side of the chair and my heart started to race, wondering what bits of crap she might pull out. She comes back up and says "I found it!" and opens her hand; oh, a round cookie crumb, precisely the size of her lost pearl. Damn. She digs her hand back down again and in another quick move, pulls it up and opens her hand as we both look to see a black beetle crawl across her palm. Good Lord...this is a true story, friends. And I am not a slovenly housekeeper. I think that the Gods were playing a cruel joke on me and put that little bugger beetle there. "He must have been snacking on the cookie crumbs" pronounced the mother-in-law. Sigh. We did have some good gossipy talk about Mr. C's sisters, though.
Mr. C returned with the broken elbow on this same afternoon. He slipped and fell into the river while trying to prevent his father from falling off a rock. When they returned, he was focussed on the fact that he was cold and drenched and not at all thinking that he had really hurt himself. We did not know that it was broken that night, and Mr. C went to the doctor the next day and well, I guess I have told you the rest...it is getting slowly better now and he is able to move it a little bit more.
It has been hard for both of us, though. A very mixed up and long week...I am making preparations to visit my brother late next week, who lives a five hour drive away. I will be taking the children and my parents, speaking of whom, were over for dinner tonight. I should have taken photos but did not in all the chaos. We had a lovely asparagus with cheese baked side dish with a bbq and new red potatoes, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. As usual, the parents were off in a flash as soon as the meal was over, with me to fend for myself with the clean-up. Nothing will change at this stage in the game...
I am looking forward to sitting down and relaxing and reading some new magazines I bought today and eating chocolate. I suddenly hear the Hallelujah Chorus ringing in my ears; do you hear it?...
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 7:44 PM.
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9:03 PM
your house is full of little things like mine. I don't mean the beetle, because although i have some of those too, they are not little.
I hope you get some rest. All the food you cooked sounds delicious. I would have stayed more for a second round though.
xxxxxx