Another Monday. Mondays suck. Or they start out that way. Its a paradigm I would like to change. I'd love to get up and do the wash on Monday like women did when I was little - ok to have the option at least. Laundry was an all day event that started early in the morning and finished with the sprinkling after naptime on Monday afternoons. In between was the washing, wringing, rinsing, wringing, hauling it up out of the basement, stringing the wash lines up, pinning up the clothes, waiting for them to dry (which on breezy days meant some of it could be taken down by the time you had the last of it hung up). On calm, humid summer days the drying might take hours and hours. If it rained after you hung it all up, well then you had to run out there and grab it all and bring it in! What an adventure that was! If it was raining before you could get it outside, then it was hung in the basement (likewise in winter). After the wash was all hung out to dry, there was lunch to be made, and the little ones (that was me) put down for a nap.
The nostalgia of playing outside on wash day and listening to the sheets and towels flapping in the breeze captivates me. Oh, But Don't touch!!! I guess making mud pies and then running through the clean clothes wasn't really an option - unless you wanted a spanking. However, when the sheets first went up (and getting to hand her the clothespins) when the grass was still damp with the dew and the sun was overhead...I recall standing between the lines and feeling the moist summer air scented with Tide or Oxydal and Downy and how it was heavenly.
I presume during naptime that the sheets and towels and underwear were brought in and folded while watching the daytime dramas (soaps). After naptime, the shirts and pants were brought in and those that would need ironing were dampened or "sprinkled" with water and then rolled up and put in a plastic bag and tucked into the fridge until the following day, which was Ironing Day. :-) "Permanent Press" was something that came later in my childhood but there was much rejoicing around that innovation I can tell ya! It eliminated that whole sprinkling thing and the recycled ketchup and coke bottles with the cork sprinkling tops were retired. There was spray starch for those difficult shirts!
I think there are actually city ordinances in some suburbs against wash hanging out on the line now-a-days!!! Pity - it would be a great way to reduce your carbon footprint! I haven't hung wash out since 1985. I lived on 46th and Bloomington Av in south Minneapolis and had actual, real wash poles and clothes lines and clothes pins! Again, more's the pity! Nothing smells better than sheets that were dried outside!
Anyway, that was Monday in the pre-liberation days. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I do like the convenience and freedom that the automatic washer and dryer affords us. But the romance of a simpler time beckons on Monday mornings sometimes.
Gardening
Its time to start pulling out the dead vegetation and the stuff that just didn't do what I expected and put in some fall flowering plants. I started this weekend with the 2 pots on the deck, replacing begonias that brightened the deck this summer in yellow,orange and red, with lavender mums.The barrel out front will have the salvia removed between now and Labor day to be replaced by yellow and magenta mums. I haven't decided yet about the pots on the front steps. I think a cabbage or some celosia and maybe some orange mums...?
Saying Goodbye
Thanks to MSNBC I was able to experience Senator Kennedy's high mass on Saturday morning. It wasn't nearly as emotional as Bobby's funeral was for me and of course I still well up with emotion and shed tears whenever I see the film clip of John-John saluting his father's flag-draped casket. I'll never forget the solitary sound of the horses clip-clopping as that grim caisson carried JFK to his final resting spot at Arlington. And the empty boots in the stirrups of the horse, symbolizing our fallen leader. Jack, Bobby and Teddy are once again united.
Now lets do the moral right thing and get this health care bill passed!!!
Knitting
Knitted my swatch for the February Lady Sweater - while the funeral progressed. The yarn is Dream in Color Classy in the Black Parade colorway (how fitting for the occasion).I decided to stay with the US 8 needles although my gage is 18 stitches to 4.5 inches and not the recommended 18 per 4 inches. Instead of trying to get the correct gauge on smaller needles, I'm going to knit a size smaller. I'm hoping my plan will work...but since the construction of this sweater is similar to the Baby Surprise Jacket (E. Zimmerman) I can't just divide the stitches to get some width measurement... We'll just have to be adventurous!
Lazy Sunday (=no movie) - just more gardening, reading, and watching the tube
Did some weeding out front and Chris applied the late summer weed N feed to the yard. I would love to get rid of the landscape rock around the front and I've been asking my son for a couple of years to help. I guess I just have to do it myself since every time I bring up the subject he tells me how hard removing rock is. Good grief!
I also finished reading Wicked by Gregory McGuire. I was under the gun on this one because the book club is meeting to discuss it on Tuesday! It was a chore to finish it. While there were parts of it that were sort of interesting, and while I had high hopes that it would get better...sadly, it did not. I felt sort of used afterward. Like I had wasted that time reading it. The book from July (Loving Frank by Nancy Horan) was really good from beginning right to the end. The September book, which I've already started, The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, is also very good right from the start. So sometimes you have a loser in the mix. If I had been reading Wicked for myself alone, I would never have finished it.
We had salmon for dinner last night...Byerly's had Copper River Salmon on sale for $9.99/lb, and while King salmon season is done until next May, we are at the end of the Sockeye season and right in the middle of the coho season. I picked up a couple of lbs and grilled it last night for dinner; it was awesome! Also, the Colorado peaches are around and they're delicious!
True Blood - the 2nd to last episode of the season. I'm hoping that last night's episode was a bridge to somewhere since it had a lot of extra stuff that didn't fit - like that whole segment surrounding the Vampire Queen. Why is Sookie's cousin there as part of the Queen's court and how come Bill doesn't act surprised? Bill leaves when Erik arrives sent by Sam to find an answer to the MaryAnn problem (same as Bill). Why do I feel like Sookie is in grave danger now from MaryAnn - even more so than Sam? Could it me that special new power she exhibited last week- coupled with the knowledge that MaryAnn is looking for "the perfect supernatural vessel" - well, perfect and with a beating heart (hence she doesn't much care about the vamps). Can they kill her? She only 'thinks' (?) she's immortal (according to Sophie-Anne) but is seeking her own death by uniting with Bacchus? Tara went down a lot in my thinking. She may not have been bug-eyed when she conned her mother there at Lafayette's but she definitely is still under some sort of spell. And what's with the giant egg in Gran's bed? A lot of info for the 2nd to last episode of the season was added although it wasn't what you could call cohesive - sort of the lull before the storm?
And all the while this was going on I couldn't get the cat off my knitting bag. Well, of course I could've but she just kept sassing me and then ducking her head back under her paw to nap. The punk! No knitting was done last night.
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