Slow Saturday
I have achieved very little today. I'm almost proud that I've achieved so very little. While most people look forward to the weekend, kicking back, and resting from the world at large, I invariably see the weekend as an endless trudge through a wrecked house, a clothes washing mountain, and an endless succession of sibling disputes to be mediated. Quite often the commute to work on Monday morning feels like an exhale of sorts. We make it through the week, and then we make it through the weekend.
The clock just ticked past mid-day. I celebrated by visiting the kitchen – where Miss 15 is making an unholy mess in pursuit of some baking project or other – and making myself a round of cheese, pepperoni, and pickle sandwiches. I'm returning in a few minutes to see if I can get close enough to the kettle to make myself a cup of coffee.
I dug out my copy of “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller this morning – it's sitting on the corner of the desk, and may well vault to the top of the list of books I'm “reading”. I say “reading”, but in reality the book mountain on my bedside table is really just the product of an inability to walk past the bookshop in town without going in and buying something. It's a problem. A nice problem, but a problem none the less. Although I do generally make my way through books I buy, some of them fall through the cracks. There is a copy of “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin on the shelf behind me – bought ten years ago, along with “Stranger in a Strange Land”, and “Brave New World”. One day... one day.
There is a reason for digging out “Catch 22” – a television series has been made of the novel that will begin showing soon – and having heard so many good things about it over the years, I want to read it before I see it, if that makes any sense (not that I ever get to watch anything any more).
I did watch one series recently – “Chernobyl” – the Hulu series recounting the nuclear accident in the 1980s. It became compulsive viewing – in a grotesque sort of way – because obviously we all know what happened. I found the closing titles interesting – that the official Soviet death toll was 31, whereas the independently estimated death tolls range from the thousands, to the tens of thousands – and growing, because people are still dying from radiation related illnesses 30 years on.
I wonder if I'll be able to get to the kettle yet ?
(a couple of minutes pass while I wander into the kitchen, almost dreading the battlefield scene I will walk into)
The kitchen wasn't too bad. Everything has been left out, so we'll see which battles I might pick when pointing out to Miss 15 that she didn't find the stand-mixer in the middle of the kitchen counter, or the baking trays all over the worktops, or any of the ingredients outside of the cupboards. It doesn't take much to trip her volcanic temper – typically any request to do anything at all is “going on at her”.
While taking recycling out – because of course the corner of the kitchen is a recycling bin, hadn't you figured that out? – I felt drops of rain. Moments later the rest of the family saw me run back through the kitchen, clothes basket in hand, shouting for help. I have a theory that rain only falls on washing when you don't notice it starting – we caught it early this time, and the rain stuttered to a halt while we pulled clothes from the line.
Right. Time to drink that coffee before it goes cold.