I had taken the lace curtains down to wash and now wonder if I'll even bother to hang them again, so struck am I by the beauty of sunlight and shadows.
Must bedrooms have curtains?
I think to myself that I must be getting well to even notice this pretty artwork in my windows, when I've noticed so little for over three weeks now, including dust on every surface.
I go into the kitchen for my glass of water and lemon oil and see that the pink geranium is almost as full of white blooms as pink.
Planted perchance by the wind two summers ago when both the geranium and a shamrock plant sat near each other on the front porch table?
I think what a quaint combination they are and consider bringing in the large pot of pink geraniums from the garden before frost and next spring scattering shamrock seeds in it.
Can it possibly be that I am at last interested again in something other than watching Netflix?
I open the kitchen door to let BreeBree and James Mason out and see that our jalapeño and serrano pepper plants are loaded down with peppers. Who even thinks about jalapeños when they're sick?
But frost is coming soon and these cannot go to waste so I get the clippers and step out into the chilly morning to cut all of them. And I do all this without shivering, a good sign.
What shall I do with them? Make cheese stuffed poppers? Am I really ready to cook again, something other than nursery food? Maybe.
I walk over to check the calendar, hoping I haven't missed another family birthday as I recently did our son-in-law's. And there beside the calendar is the photograph of our beautiful daughter-in-law that I stuck up there in early September because she is picking apples and that's what they do in September.
I think about all the Facebook pictures she and our son put up last week when our granddaughters were on fall break. Each day crammed with fun things for the girls to do around their own hometown because this year they didn't go to the beach for fall break.
I shake my head in amazement at how much fun these two young parents create for their children constantly and I regret again that RH and I were such sticks-in-the-mud by the time that our last two kids came along.
I guess we're all that and even more so now. Sticks-in-the-mud. Old people in a rut.
I get mad and think about changing, someday, when I get well.
I could make a start by quitting postponing my day out with my sister....has it really been almost a year since we had a Sisters Day, seeing fabulous historic houses on a Christmas tour of homes?
For months we've talked about visiting the house we lived in as small children, or shopping in some of the cute shops and antique stores in my own little town outside Nashville.
I wonder how soon I'll be able to do that because it seems really important to me that we not put it off.
Maybe when the autumn colors finally arrive we will, which surely will happen in another week or two?
I load the dishwasher, start it and pat it in thankfulness for the flu germs it kills, start a load of laundry next and make my bed--no, I'm lying about that. I mean to but never summon the energy.
Instead I look at all the dust on furniture in every room, make a start on that until a coughing spell interferes with the chore. I decide to finish sorting my drawers of jumbled table linens.
I feel weak, shaky, tired but so happy handling all the pretty cloth napkins I've collected over the years.
Just a common variety hausfrau stuck in a rut and more happy to be in one than I should be.
Maybe I'll start small in climbing out of my rut, make those jalapeño poppers for supper. What else can I put with it that might pass as a meal to RH?
My fried onion rings! He likes them.
Suddenly a wave of fatigue washes over me and I remember the mess that onion rings make. I decide that it'll just be leftover soup with the poppers....or possibly only leftover soup.
Maybe next week I'll climb out of my rut.
Besides, what's so bad about a rut?
Why this passion for shaking people out of ruts? I am devoted to ruts. Moreover, most of the people who are in ruts are much nicer, and much happier, than the people who are not. To speak of ruts as though they were undesirable is the sign of a coarse and callow mind. Ruts are the wise old wrinkles that civilization has traced on the earth's ancient face.
Beverley Nichols
Laughter On the Stairs
