february cleaning

 

 

  Over the years I have grown to love sloppy, gray February.  It’s the best time of year for a Marie-Kondo-style clean out, when the days are too cold and the mud is too deep to wander out of doors for long.  I spent the other morning cleaning out the school room, filing papers and removing all of the little toys and bits that don’t belong.  I should probably have been setting up our the remaining term of our school year (How can it even be time for that?), but it’s easier to work in a clean space.  As the picture of our art supply cabinet shows, we have a lot of work to do!  I’m hoping to paint our art cabinet in the spring (white? green? blue?) and replace that yellow glass with something else this summer, and that process will be a whole lot simpler after we’ve culled our favorite supplies.

While I cleaned yesterday, I listened to an audiobook, one that I read a while ago.  I used to listen to audiobooks all the time when my kids were younger, and somehow got out of the habit when they got noisier and my Walkman broke.  That’s indicative of just how long ago that was--the library still had most of their books on cassette and I had no devices other than a Walkman!  Anyway, I hoped that this exciting audiobook would keep me engaged and warm up my listening muscles, but I forgot that there’s some profanity!  Yikes!  I have to listen when people aren’t around or use headphones.  I’m hoping that once I’ve established the habit of listening, I can go back to listening to my favorite literary classics which are cleaner (and better for me all around).  I’m also hoping that it will put me in the habit of listening to some of the podcasts from Ancient Faith Radio. Lent is fast approaching!

My husband has nearly finished the new table for our dining room.  It’s beautiful.  He surprised me with it a few Christmases ago, making it exactly to my "dream table" measurements.  We’re currently using both table and room for schooling, so it’s not ideal.  We have a big renovation still in the "castle in the air" stage, but hope to meet with real people to discuss actual details in the next few months.  When that renovation happens, the dining room will be our main room for eating and school operations will move to where they were last year--our sunroom.  But before a kitchen reno, we need central AC, and fewer belongings!  

A Psalm of Life

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 

   Life is but an empty dream! 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 

   And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 

   And the grave is not its goal; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

   Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

   Is our destined end or way; 

But to act, that each to-morrow 

   Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

   And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 

   Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world’s broad field of battle, 

   In the bivouac of Life, 

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 

   Be a hero in the strife! 

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! 

   Let the dead Past bury its dead! 

Act,-- act in the living Present! 

   Heart within, and God o’erhead! 

Lives of great men all remind us 

   We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

   Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

   Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

   With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

   Learn to labor and to wait.