Heroic Housekeeping
Heroic Housekeeping
As of today, Monday, December 13, 1999, I still have pumpkins on my front porch. Along with my bale of straw. No lights. No garland.
I’ve taken in the scarecrow that used to adorn the bale, but he’s right by the front door on a chair with the chaffs of wheat that also used to be out front. They are, technically, no longer on public display.
We don’t have a tree. The decorations are on the living room couch where they have been for the last two weeks since we got them out in an early unjustified, unsustained burst of enthusiasm for the season.
Half the presents for our eight kids are bought, but the missionary in Romania still doesn’t have a box in the mail. And we are almost the only family in the neighborhood with no icicle lights on the eves—in this place which is clearly, however unidentified and unrecognized, the National Capital of Icicle Lights. And, furthermore, I have no idea what I’m going to put in our Christmas letter—unless I send out this column.
I’m telling you this in hopes that no matter how far behind you are, you’ll know that someone else is trailing you.
I also got pneumonia last Friday which makes me feel like someone has just jammed their extra cut-off Christmas tree branches into the grease-choked gear box of my Happy Homemaker soul.
And yet, I did manage to accomplish one thing last week--before I got sick.
First, as a preface, remember the heroic old days when women were really women and they canned twelve bushels of slippery, sticky, peaches and slippery, sticky tomatoes and ditto, ditto pears outside on the old wood stove, and skinned an elk while they boiled the diapers and gave birth in the shade on their noon break? And then made their own soap when they needed to wash up?
Well, I used to be like that. Sorta.
I used to can anyway, although it was more like three or four bushels. Combined. And I think I made deer meat jerky, once, while I was listening to “Rocky Mountain High” and wearing flower print Grannie dresses. However, I can’t imagine that we actually ate it
And I could sew up a storm as long as there was ribbing and stretch knit material. And no one had to wear the clothes who seriously cared what they looked like.
I thought of myself as around a five or a six on the Perfect Ten Judgment Day Scale of Mormon Motherhood. Not bad, it could have been worse.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be my high point.
Since then, I dropped off considerable. Once I made a cake mix and my kids called all their friends over for “homemade dessert”.
So, now, when I tell you that I BAKED COOKIES last week, you may know that you’ve been told of a modern day miracle. And I don’t mean grocery store refrigerator cookie dough either. I mean, we got out the cookbooks and followed the recipes and everything! We had stuff all over the kitchen, racks and pans and pot holders and butter and sacks of flour and sugar and we ate cookies for lunch and dinner and fudge until we couldn’t stand it anymore.
We made oatmeal cookies, and potato chip cookies, and lemonade cookies, and jam sandwich cookies, and a couple of other kinds I can’t even remember.
We cooked all day from seven in the morning until eleven at night.
We all worked and we BONDED as a family. Of course, part of that comes from the fact that we’re all now on antibiotics.
But amidst all of my failure as an elf of Christmas present, we accomplished something monumental. We have cookies for our neighbors and friends and people we want to remember because we love them and they’ve had a bad year and people we’d like to get to know. We’ve got “appreciation cookies” for people we respect and “repentance cookies” for the people that drive us crazy who we’ve said mean things about behind their backs.
We’re ready for Christmas now. Our family will have something to give and what could be more important than that?
Of course, I probably ought to take in the pumpkins. I ought to at least put them on the couch with the decorations.
As of today, Monday, December 13, 1999, I still have pumpkins on my front porch. Along with my bale of straw. No lights. No garland.
I’ve taken in the scarecrow that used to adorn the bale, but he’s right by the front door on a chair with the chaffs of wheat that also used to be out front. They are, technically, no longer on public display.
We don’t have a tree. The decorations are on the living room couch where they have been for the last two weeks since we got them out in an early unjustified, unsustained burst of enthusiasm for the season.
Half the presents for our eight kids are bought, but the missionary in Romania still doesn’t have a box in the mail. And we are almost the only family in the neighborhood with no icicle lights on the eves—in this place which is clearly, however unidentified and unrecognized, the National Capital of Icicle Lights. And, furthermore, I have no idea what I’m going to put in our Christmas letter—unless I send out this column.
I’m telling you this in hopes that no matter how far behind you are, you’ll know that someone else is trailing you.
I also got pneumonia last Friday which makes me feel like someone has just jammed their extra cut-off Christmas tree branches into the grease-choked gear box of my Happy Homemaker soul.
And yet, I did manage to accomplish one thing last week--before I got sick.
First, as a preface, remember the heroic old days when women were really women and they canned twelve bushels of slippery, sticky, peaches and slippery, sticky tomatoes and ditto, ditto pears outside on the old wood stove, and skinned an elk while they boiled the diapers and gave birth in the shade on their noon break? And then made their own soap when they needed to wash up?
Well, I used to be like that. Sorta.
I used to can anyway, although it was more like three or four bushels. Combined. And I think I made deer meat jerky, once, while I was listening to “Rocky Mountain High” and wearing flower print Grannie dresses. However, I can’t imagine that we actually ate it
And I could sew up a storm as long as there was ribbing and stretch knit material. And no one had to wear the clothes who seriously cared what they looked like.
I thought of myself as around a five or a six on the Perfect Ten Judgment Day Scale of Mormon Motherhood. Not bad, it could have been worse.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be my high point.
Since then, I dropped off considerable. Once I made a cake mix and my kids called all their friends over for “homemade dessert”.
So, now, when I tell you that I BAKED COOKIES last week, you may know that you’ve been told of a modern day miracle. And I don’t mean grocery store refrigerator cookie dough either. I mean, we got out the cookbooks and followed the recipes and everything! We had stuff all over the kitchen, racks and pans and pot holders and butter and sacks of flour and sugar and we ate cookies for lunch and dinner and fudge until we couldn’t stand it anymore.
We made oatmeal cookies, and potato chip cookies, and lemonade cookies, and jam sandwich cookies, and a couple of other kinds I can’t even remember.
We cooked all day from seven in the morning until eleven at night.
We all worked and we BONDED as a family. Of course, part of that comes from the fact that we’re all now on antibiotics.
But amidst all of my failure as an elf of Christmas present, we accomplished something monumental. We have cookies for our neighbors and friends and people we want to remember because we love them and they’ve had a bad year and people we’d like to get to know. We’ve got “appreciation cookies” for people we respect and “repentance cookies” for the people that drive us crazy who we’ve said mean things about behind their backs.
We’re ready for Christmas now. Our family will have something to give and what could be more important than that?
Of course, I probably ought to take in the pumpkins. I ought to at least put them on the couch with the decorations.
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