Lazy summer

It's been a lazy time for me this past week. I haven't made any bread or swept the floor for a few days. There are little balls of dog fur under the kitchen table. : - ) The weather's been hot and humid and I'm listening to my head when it tells me to take it easy. It's going to be a very busy year for me so I'm taking advantage of these slow summer days and you know what? I feel no guilt, I'm happy to tell you about my dirty floor, and I might even take it easy again today.

I do have to do some washing today. I've had my white cotton table cloth, used on Christmas day, soaking in a bucket of oxy-bleach water. It's time to wash it and hang it out to dry. It's been in the bucket for a week, another sign of this deliberate, delightful laziness.

As a writer I sometimes find things that I wish I'd written. Many of you, like myself, are admirers of Jewels and read each posts as soon as it's there. Of all the things Jewels has written about that beautiful life of hers, this paragraph is the one I admire the most, the one I keep returning to, and the one I wish I'd written:

"I hope your day is beautiful. Hold your children, your husband, those you love and care for, tenderly, close. Kiss them and hug them. Smile often-- a soft, bright, loving, accepting, approving, smile. Be thankful for those you love, and be sure and express your pleasure with them, to them--through words, through your touch, so they know what your heart holds, towards them. Sincerely praise for even the smallest things that are praise-worthy, and with eyes open wide, take note of, and be thankful for, each kindness shown to you. Life is fleeting, and the only moments we can be entirely sure of, are those that we're presently in, right here, right now. Let us live our lives deliberately, purposefully, making every one of those precious fleeting moments matter, for now, and for eternity, in our life and in the lives of those we love."

I feel those words right down to my bones, I hope you do too and I hope your day today is beautiful.

Although I've been deliberately lazy these past few days, I'm still working on my book and will continue to do that for months yet. It is just those chores in my home that are being put aside until I feel like doing them, or I am forced into action for fear of mildew - as in the case of the white tablecloth.

Another delicious part of my day today will be to finish off a book my friend Sharon sent as a surprise Christmas gift. It arrived new year's eve, quite out of the blue, there is was - Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalis. I'd hadn't heard of the book before I laid eyes on it but it's such a charming, well written account of growing up on a farm during the Great Depression, I'm sure it will remain one of my favourite books and will be reread over and over again. Thank you Sharon and Claude.

There are few pleasures I enjoy more than that moment I realise the book I've just started reading it something really special. That moment came to me on new year's eve. I'd just had a cool shower, was reclining on the bed in my white cotton nightie, the fan was buzzing overhead and I was surrounded by a half moon of pillows. Sheer luxury! After the first couple of pages I recognised the beauty of Little Heathens and was beginning to see glimpses of the familiar in it. I could see my own mother, and myself, in her mother, and reading through those pages made me realise that even though we were on different sides of the world and were not the same age, we had a similar childhood growing up in working class families in those long ago, hard, but simple, times. One of the themes of the book is hard times build character. I firmly agree with that and while I don't see myself as living in hard times now - even though I am - I see instead that I am what I am because of my childhood, those parts of it I choose to remember and those parts I choose to forget.

Little Heathens is one of those books you read slowly because you don't want it to end, I will finish it today but keep it in my knitting basket to browse through when I remember favourite parts of it over the next week or two. And one of the enduring memories I'll have of this lazy summer will be reading that book on a hot summer night, with my ceiling fan buzzing and smiling when I read "... the Urmys [her family] could easily have served as models for the source of H.L. Menchen's definition of Puritanism as 'the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.' ... " : - )