the laundry: that great dark cloud of despair

I really ought to be downstairs doing laundry...I feel like that line should be set to music and be playing as the soundtrack to my life...it's always down there, like Gallum, hissing at me in the dark, even when I'm up here doing nice things like making tarts for a sad goodbye to graduating seniors.

Strawberry Tarts: pie crust rolled out and baked in muffin tins and then filled first with a layer of cream cheese whipped with the juice from sugar macerated strawberries and then a layer of the berries themselves and then whipped cream.

Chocolate Tarts: dark chocolate melted in a double boiler and then whipped into the rest of the cream cheese not mixed with strawberry juice. Whipped cream on top.

I doled out a small number of tarts to the children in the kitchen before making them go play. More and more I am for all the children going to play when grow ups are trying to talk. Everyone is pretty happy this way because no one has to be bored by grown ups or annoyed by whining children.

I was also generous with the rest of the strawberries and cream. I may yell, occasionally, but the compensations for my short temper are sweet. Now Stop Screaming And Eat!

See how nicely everyone is chewing with the mouth closed? 

So really, back to the laundry. It doesn't matter what other massive jobs I undertake, the garage, for instance, the laundry is ever there, living its great dark presence in my broken and diseased mind.

Even when we flee to the great out doors, to lovely parks 

on golden warm afternoons

sitting in a heavy cloud of lilac scented glory.

And yet, for all it's wretched guilty presence, we do manage to go out clothed and mildly sane. Even on Sundays, some bows and vests can be scraped together and applied before libations of chocolate milk and cookies.

Every Sunday I'm told they look beautiful, which they do, but only by grace and not my own works, my long exasperated works of washing, folding, flinging into drawers, picking clean things up off the floors, and some cussing.

And then the inevitable Sunday Morning Fuss in which I discover that I did not pick the right dress for one child or that a vest is covered in pen, or that no one has any shoes at all.

But once they're out the door they seem to forget. And I do also, until I descend back down into the pit, or Sheol, as I've been more recently calling it, to have another go at it.

Really, I argue with Jesus, at least the Pharisees did wash the outside of the cup. At least they washed something. So they never bothered with the inside, at least they cleaned something. Whatever, says Jesus, stop complaining. 

 So I guess I will for now, stop complaining that is, and revise my school plan for next year, because just as laundry hangs over the conscience, so does homeschooling. But at least that can be done in the light and there is a vague sense of going somewhere and accomplishing something.

See. One child done, Elphine,

one nearly so, Alouicious, spurred on by the future hope of something I've been told is called Sweet Frog.