Will was right

Have you ever seen that Saturday Night Live skit where Garth Brooks (as some unknown country singer) sells his soul to the devil so that he can write a hit song? And then the devil shows up and it's Will Ferrell with a black trench coat and some red paint on his face? And it turns out that selling your soul to the devil is just plain dumb, because all of his songs are stupid, like "Fred's Got Slacks" but the one I'm really thinking of is "Mondays oh I hate Mondays... oh oh oh oh oh oh oh... Weekends! I prefer the Weekends!"

Because Mondays, oh I hate Mondays. And I do prefer the weekends.  There is no greater happiness than a Saturday afternoon, after I've put my younger two in bed for a nap and I sit on my little couch with a cup of tea and read, or write, or lately, knit. Oh happiness. On weekdays I am very, very busy.  As soon as my little ones are napping I am rushing around doing various office work and administrative blahdy blah blah, and I think that the idea of the impending week just kills me on Mondays.

But, I can write again, because it's Tuesday and I am not paralysed with fear and dread anymore, so I can write my way out of it.  Like, I can tell you how I'm going to start calling chores "meditations". We will not use that word, chores, anymore. "I'm getting up from the table now, because I have to do the dish meditations," or, "I can't come out and play just yet, I have to do some meditations."  Plural like that, because I think it sounds cuter.

I'm not talking about in a lofty, detached way of doing things, but more a trippy, "dude, this soap is really sudsy and it feels soft on my hands" way. You know, noticing. Marveling. Like a kid who loves to use the vacuum because it's just so cool.

Think about the way it feels to bathe your newborn for the very first time. You hold them so gingerly, you are a little scared of all this water near their little open nostrils. They are tiny and bird-like and they might cry, if they are like Kid-A, or smile, if they are like YaYa. But you are so reverent. Then think about the way you bathe your little kids now (maybe this is just me) as you dump a cup of water over their heads and hurriedly wash their hair. You're thinking, "Didn't we just DO this?" I'm saying that I want to bathe my baby slowly, marveling over his toes and how they look more and more like his dad's, aware of the water, my baby's skin, and how intricately he has been formed, what a miracle he is.

So, there you go. I'm just writing over my reluctance to do things I consider mundane (like make the bed for the sixteen thousandth flipping time in my life) trying to tattoo my hands with the words: slow down, be thankful, consider, and above all: give a sacrifice of praise.