Wind, though a wonderful feature for drying clothes, is
not so great when they are being hung out.
While wrestling the clothesline into submission just now, I was whipped by my
towels. There are no trees around the
little tin can that we presently call home and the wind sweeping across the
fields can be merciless. Today it is
bitter cold and the clothes are freezing to the line where they connect with
the clothespins. I’ve just come in from
outside and I can’t yet feel the keys under my fingertips. Now I just hope that this fierce wind doesn’t
snap some pins off the line and send my clean napkins into the adjacent chicken
yard (which has been known to happen).
Also on the list for today: ironing my Love’s work shirts,
baking bread, making soup with squash and turnip greens from our garden and
stuffing my face with my brother’s awesome Christmas peanut brittle.
I do this because 1) I’m unemployed, 2) I want to and 3)
because that peanut brittle is damn good.
I eat so much in one sitting my mouth can’t close all the way due to the
mounds of sweet hard candy goodness embedded in my molars.
I know WTF—he doesn’t want me at home if he can’t be at home. If he must go forth into the J-O-B world and suffer, so must I.
Because in our private pantheon, he would be the God of Hearth and Home—a muscular, sculpted man-deity with intense blue-green eyes, stag’s antlers crowning his head and a loincloth improbably fashioned from oak leaves. Hearth and Home God would be found striding into the forest before dawn where he spends the day stalking edible woodland creatures. He returns home carrying a bloody carcass with which to feed his (childless) family, and then, blood smeared on his bulging pectorals, he would soundly ravish his Domestic Goddess.
And finally, if the D.G. has
slacked on her chores (as she is wont to do), he will clean the bathtub and
wash the dishes because he can’t stand the mess and because he was brought up
right.
