February 23, 2022
I’ve always considered the definition
of a traditional February as being the month of bitter sub-zeros and too much snow.
With less than a full week left of this deeply wintry month, I can report that
February of 2022 has been exceedingly traditional.
With the freeze-thaw-freeze
cycle we’ve been in the last week or so, I haven’t ventured outside. I have to
be very careful moving when it’s snowy and icy, of course, and it just seems
unnecessary to go out just for the sake of getting fresh air.
I open the front door, as well
as the back one, at least twice a week. I stick my head out and I breath in,
and deeply too, at least three times! That’s fresh air, and that’s my story and
I’m sticking to it—at least until we get a few warmer days.
As soon as we have couple of
days where the mercury climbs to forty, then of course I will open my doors and
windows and air this house out. It never gets really stale in here anyway, because
we do have several little places where the seals between the doors and windows of
this place and the outside world are not what anyone would call airtight.
David tried to replace the
weatherstripping on the back door last week, but quickly realized that it’s a
project best saved for the spring. He also has proposed installing screen
doors, front and back, and actually, I like that idea. Not because I think that
the extra door will keep the cold out in winter, though I suppose it might help.
But because I can then have the doors open to the air in the summer, but not open
for the bugs to come in.
There’s nothing I hate more
than when flies get in my house. And we don’t even want to mention the occasional
wasp, do we? I think having screen doors will be a great way to combat that
habit he has of leaving the inside door wide open. And yes, I will suggest,
strongly, that the screen doors he acquires have glass that can be raised or
lowered as the need arises.
Wish me luck with that one.
Our renovation in the bathroom
is complete, and I am now almost exclusively using the door that opens between it
and our bedroom. The new closet is still in the planning stage, and that’s
fine. David will be getting to work on that soon. I’ve done my part, as I have
given away nearly a half of all the clothing I had prior to this renovation.
That wasn’t as hard as I had feared it would be, because I gave myself
permission to keep anything I felt really attached to.
I know I didn’t do a good job
of explaining myself when my husband asked me why I was so upset over his
original dictate – “that you have too many clothes, and they just have
to go!” Fortunately for the cause of world peace and security, my beloved will
never be a member of Canada’s diplomatic corps.
As I get older, I often reflect
on the days of raising kids. I used to joke that once you become a parent, you
no longer have the right to own anything, because those kids were capable of
breaking, borrowing, or losing anything and everything, on a regular basis. And
not necessarily but also, as I get older, I feel less secure, just generally
speaking.
My relationship with clothing
has always been…different. While raising our kids, what money was available for
clothing went to buy clothing for them. I still recall the day I was taking our
middle child, the one no longer here, to the mall to buy him a pair of really
good athletic shoes. They cost a mint, but he needed them. As I was walking
down the mall toward the store, I was glad I was wearing slacks, because the
elastic in my undies chose that moment to let go. If I’d been wearing a skirt, my
undies might have hit the floor. At the time, I found it really funny that I
was about to spend more than a hundred dollars on shoes for my son, when I didn’t
have decent underwear for myself.
Now, I have no kids to raise,
and since, oh, about the last twenty years or so, I’ve felt relatively free to
ensure I have good underwear, and all manner of other necessary clothing,
whatever I’ve needed and occasionally, I even felt free to buy something that
was pretty, that I wanted, but didn’t necessarily need.
So, when David told me I must
rid myself of most of my clothing as if it was nothing more than unnecessary flotsam
and jetsam, it just kind of pissed me off.
But I went through everything that
had been hanging in my closet and not worn for a long time and managed to fill
three large bags for donation. And when my husband seemed pleased with my
effort, I simply shrugged.
And I assured him that if I
did start leaving the house again on a regular basis, my first few trips out
would most likely be to buy new clothes.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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