On Maintenance and Quality

Life sometimes seems like it's just bodysurfing on waves of entropy. "Have some fun," is followed by, "Clean your room," and it never ends. That's okay, so long as there's some fun punctuating the cleaning.

For Mothers' Day (U.S.), my parents came up for the weekend. They brought up more treasures from my grandmother's house, including a tool chest that still smells of machine oil and kerosene and a metal lunchbox that has stacked sections, the bottom one being for charcoal and each higher one for something that is supposed to be progressively less warm. My mother explained it as, "Charcoal, then soup, then other stuff, until you get to your tortillas up at the top." It was last used forty years ago, and now I'm itching to clean it up and invent some kind of excuse to use it. Man, that is so cool.

Aoibheall has been making clothes for the BabyGoddess. She and my mother go fabric shopping practically every time my folks visit (which thrills both of them) and then she gets busy making useful things that make us all happy. Today, BabyGoddess is a little giraffe, as Aoibheall just finished making a cute little dress from a reticulated print. It's swell!

While Aoibheall was making clothes, I was sanding and oiling a shelf for the master bedroom. Now we've gotten rid of the last of the cruddy pressboard bookcases and I've moved a couple of boxes down to the basement. We're ready for more books to be unpacked, because the pressboard bookcase has been replaced by an 8 foot 2 by 10 and a china cupboard that's older than I am.