i’m shine, i’m freshly minted

February 6, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary 

it seems colder in the house than out of it. the boys are buried beneath blankets, the pairs of their feet each touching the others as they dream different dreams in the same bed. our down comforter is being dry-cleaned for reasons with which i won’t horrify anyone tonight. a wrinkly woman in a valentine sweatshirt adorned with bears and hearts and the creepiness of lace slapped the random thirty-seven dollar cleaning price tag on my forehead. what more can i say than, “silence,” and then “ooooookey, dokey?” the bears on her pill-y sweatshirt (i hate the word “sweatshirt”) appreciated those words. jude, amazed that his hand cannot retrieve a giant gumball from the machine by sticking his fingers and hand up into the doorway, doesn’t notice the sweatshirt. henry doesn’t notice, either, too curious about the horrible dry-cleaning odor in the building.

we drive away and i mutter something about it being “idiotic.” jude chastises me for using the word “idiot” and i actually idiotically argue that i did not say “idiot,” but, the very different word, “idiotic.” both children are distracted by the convenience of gummy worms and the use of “unkind words” is forgotten.

today we kept house and tonight it feels nice to drink tea with the necessary sauciness of a saucer in a bed with white blankets. this afternoon the boys ate popcorn in front of the tv because the vacuum was sitting fat and full in the corner, ready to groan for the work to come. henry worked hard all day because of the thirty-seven dollar price that comes when little boys don’t put the freaking cat down so that it can go and pee in the proper place after a long night of snoring/purring. he didn’t complain, either, even though thirty-seven dollars doesn’t mean anything to him. i don’t want to be obnoxious about it, but i do try to tell him all that we could buy with thirty-seven dollars. there just really isn’t much, is there?

i think in pink and white and maybe brown polka-dottage and the construction of a mysterious chocolate dessert and something new to cook for my valentines. i also think about having two celebrations of love, one with all of us, a great circle of love with many sizes of fingers and hands that will involve spills and the necessary wallow of mess under jude’s chair, that will be made of a laugh and of food that does not have anything mushroom-suspicious disguised as friendly; and a second celebration, one where we will pay for someone else to cook the food and play with the children, probably ending in quiet and the buying of books.

the cat purrs in my lap. the house is quiet. somewhere i hear ernie making music, the long strands of his thoughts connected to stars and something cumulous. the tea kettle gives a rumble and gets to work. i consider the whereabouts of slippers, the birth of my brother’s daughter, and whether or not it will rain tomorrow.

Comments