3 Day Weekends

Yea for 3 Day Weekends - and for the delicious autumn season that has so many of them. I seriously

them. And I am sure there are so many in the fall and early winter because we have so little daylight during those months. The Powers That Be must think we all need a little more daytime to ourselves - so hey - let's give 'em a Monday Off.  Yes. I know. I could take off a Monday from my little store of annual leave, but these? They feel like freebies. Bonuses. And I appreciate them to the max.

It's been a hard summer to be a good Virgo. My brain has been so fuzzy at times I've wondered if, well, maybe I wasn't getting .. um. ah. well ... old!!! I haven't been goal directed - as little goal directed as an ENFP ever is - nor have I been particularly creative and projects I have started have crashed and burned. But I am going to blame it on extreme heat, extreme losses, and oh - anything else I can toss blame on for my Summer-0-Sloth.

But now there is this lovely 3 Day Weekend - in honor of the 19th century Labor Movement. In school, in the early 1960's, I was taught that the labor movement was a vital and good thing that finally freed the American worker from industrial serfdom. To some extent, I still believe it - but I am such a non-joiner  collective activity always gives me the creeps. That is - until I want to get something done and then - well - then I wouldn't dream of taking on a big project without gathering a team around me. So. I have mixed feelings about collective movements and as I sit here writing this I realize it's not the collective that bothers me but the size of the collection. The bigger a group gets, the more it resembles a mob. (to me) I never trust a big crowd and I love a tidy committee. And so it should come as no surprise that I moved to a farm just outside a tiny little town in a county with a population under 12K people.

I like miniatures and doll houses too.

So along comes Columbus Day - which is a much newer holiday and isn't even celebrated on October 12 anymore. In 1992, BD read to us from the Log Book of the Santa Maria every day. It was one of the most interesting out-loud reading experience I've ever had and I came to have a much deeper understanding of, and respect for, Columbus. It's why I was so disgusted with the caliber of commemorations produced by museums and media, which mostly portrayed him as Satan afloat. History is a touchy subject anyway because so much of it involves winners and losers. Each generation puts its own interpretation on whatever record exists - a record that was created under the influence of the mores and values of a specific place, time, and culture. I love to read history - but I always try to absorb it with a good dose of skepticism -  or at least with the caveat "so the author claims" hovering always in the back of my mind.  

I feel a little differently about Veteran's Day - but that is because my daddy was a WWII veteran and maybe also, because we were on the winning side in both of those "Great Wars".  And truth to tell - I hate all wars and I haven't been able to read much about any of them in a long time. The older I get, the more I resent warfare. I understand. I know that we are all humans and so each of us is as fallible as the next - but I wish wish wish the urge to fight had not been put into our DNA.

Wait. No. That's not what I mean - I love a good fight against some things - a fight to improve myself, to learn something new, to create something wonderful. Fighting against internal sloth or stupidity or disease - the fight against suffering or poverty - I love that sort of struggle. It's the fight that's based on greed, that stems from the belief that there is only so much of goodness to go around and if somebody has something good it means you don't have it - so you better grab it from him - it's that sort of fight that depresses me.

Hey. What's this? I was all up about the 3 Day Weekend and now I'm getting all gloomy and political. Well. Enough of that. Just know - I love me a 3 Day Weekend. I particularly love this one 'cause I'm gonna eat crabs on the porch, with friends. After I clean the house.

Oh. Yes. That's another reason I like a 3-DW! Because I will clean house on a Saturday and when it's a 3-DW I get 2 days to enjoy it!

Happy Labor Day to you all.

Perceptions of time and space

clean house ready for knitting in

  Ever since I was a small child, Saturday was House Cleaning Day. We weren't a large family by baby boomer standards: 4 girls and 2 parents. And our house wasn't any sort of mansion, though it did have 4 bathrooms. I haven't any real idea of how they wanted to run that house, because after I grew up and watched how they lived, uncluttered by children, I realized my mom was the tidy one and dad was an absolute pack rat slob. My mother never seemed do be doing any housework, though the house was always company clean. And I assumed, at the time, that it was because every Saturday, accompanied by lots of shouting and bustle and threats, we had to Clean House.

There was no playing till everything was done, which, mostly was each of us cleaning our own rooms. Each of us also had to take on one of the major tasks, like bathrooms or ironing (remember, this was before permanent press cotton and everything had to be starched! ask me how I know.) or vacuuming. Since I was required to practice my violin 3 hours every non-school day, it was often pretty late in the day before I got to do whatever I wanted to do. Yeah - pushy parents. I often think that I didn't get to be a kid till I grew up.

But that is just another one of those skewed perceptions, because of course I did play and of course I was a kid and in fact, once I had a house of my own to take care of I realized that Mama was doing housework all the time. She just didn't make a big deal out of it. And she never put off cleaning up a mess until it became a Mess. or even a DISASTER.

I never mastered Mama's way with staying on top of housework and I never lost the scolding holler of Dad about Cleaning This *%$(&^% House lying deep in my psyche. This means I can never sit down to play on a Saturday unless the house is clean and it's usually a Big Deal to clean it. In the summertime it's a lesser task because the door to the porch is open, the house is much bigger, there is no firewood spitting crumbs and sawdust onto the floor. There are screens in the windows that blur the grime on the glass. Come cold weather and we shut ourselves into a smaller space with the lowering sun slanting through multi-paned windows - and believe me - those panes had better be clean because otherwise the place has the look and feel of a slum.

Still and all, there is nothing that makes one feel quite so spacious and expansive as a Clean House and today I have one. I even spent some time tidying up my knitting bookshelves, winnowing out a few I no longer want to make room for the birthday books. I still haven't taken the time to sit down and read Katherine Cobey's Diagonal Knitting. Of course, today is a sunny brilliantly beautiful Autumn day and along with feeling like I Must Clean House on Saturdays, I also brought with me, from childhood, the nagging sensation of: If the sun is shining I Must Be Out Doors. Indoor play is ONLY for rainy days.

Honestly, some of the crap we bring with us from childhood is so stupid - and to still feel this way after ... ahem ... many many decades ... is stupider still. Ah well, there you have it. At least my house is clean and by gum - I am going to knit today even if it is another tourist worthy golden autumn day. I have about 5 more rounds of button band to knit on that alpaca vest and then I may cast on my Soho dress. I believe I shall put an opera on the CD player and slip away into wooly yarny paradise.

Happy Sunday to you - and may you be free of any nagging ghosts from childhood.