ode

To the mother who makes a hot breakfast that no one will eat, so instead of throwing it out, she eats it herself.

To the teen-age daughter who thoughtfully left two pieces of chocolate on her mom's keyboard, knowing a taste of chocolate would lift her at some point in the day.

To having a weekend in the Big Apple to break up January!

To the boy who kicked out the banister on the stairway, and then tearfully said I'm sorry.

To the kids, who, after dinner, constructed a new game involving a ball, the stairway (with no banisters) and much laughter.  Music for the soul.

Oatmeal

I ate it for breakfast, after my walk, alone in the kitchen.
It was gooey and warm, sweetened with lumps of brown sugar and thinning with milk.
It made me want to write a poem--I can't explain why.
Instead I googled "poems about oatmeal" and came up with a hit
and Galway Kinnell joined me for breakfast.

Oatmeal - by Galway Kinnell

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if
  somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
  breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
  companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal with
  John Keats.
Keats said I was right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture,
  gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual willingness to
  disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is OK to eat it with an
  imaginary companion, and that he himself had enjoyed
  memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if such porridges are not as wholesome as Keats claims,
  still, you can learn something from them.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
  "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it––those were his words––
  "Oi ad a 'eck of a toime, "he said more or less, speaking
  through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck
  in his pocket, but when he got home he couldn't figure out the
  order of the stanzas, and he and a friend spread the papers on
  a table, and they made some sense of them, but he isn't sure
  to this day if they got if right
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between
  stanzas and the way here and there a line will go into the
  configuration  of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
  and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
  causing the poem to  move forward with God's reckless wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard
  about the scraps of paper on the table and tried shuffling
  some stanzas of his own but only made matters worse.
When breakfast was over John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the
  works lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn." I doubt if there
  is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him
  started on it and two the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed
  their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by
  hours," came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him––drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into
  the glimmering furrows, muttering––and it occurs to me:
  maybe there is no sublime, only the shining of the amnion's
tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over
  from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and
  simultaneously gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to
  invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

the ears:

they are perforated.

of sewing machines and fish

Give a man a fish; 

you have fed him for today. 

Teach a man to fish; 

and you have fed him for a lifetime

today I'm treating myself to a card reader.

(Thanks, Jody, for the tip!)

It takes a village to raise me.

ALSO, I am grateful for my Christmas skirt, which I will probably wear-out from sheer love.

And because I'm going to pick it every Sunday morning until it becomes too warm to wear velvet.  

Last Sunday I had on black tights and a black sweater.  Versatility is a bonus~

Thanks, Mom!

And the tween-ager thanks you too; 

she just wasn't feeling photogenic at her post-church, pre-end-the-fast meal photo shoot.

And last, but CERTAINLY not least, THANK YOU Joy!  

For letting mom turn your curtains into Holiday attire and a newly upholstered chair.  I sat in it Saturday night, and had a hard time not stroking it's softness until I wore out the spot where my hand fell.

The last time I wore curtains (my 5th grade Christmas concert) I did not enjoy it even remotely as much.  

The other two girls did not happen to wear their match-y skirts to church today, so they missed the photo-op.  Their expressions might have been similar, so picture Blondie times three.

embrace the fuzzy cell phone pictures

I'm grateful for this ridiculously over-sized retro lunch box.

The family-sized cooler in the background is for scale.

It was a gift.

And now it is our Sunday snack box.

Those of you who attend church for three hours each Sunday, and spend another hour traveling to and from services will appreciate how valuable this would be to a vehicle full of famished children of ALL ages.

Sunday snacks.

We don't leave home without them.

Happy New 2011!

Just for the record, I've started the year off on the right foot.

Breakfast dessert, New Year's Day.

Amen.