Wednesday, February 1, 2017

{From My Commonplace} :: For the First Day of February

These are vocation-altering, purpose-giving, perspective-changing words.  Read and ponder and let them change the way you view those February doldrums.


"What Aslang complained about till she positively shrieked -- that housework was so monotonous: no sooner had she prepared a meal than it was eaten up, and then it was soon time to think of another, and when one had washed up and put things away, one knew that in a couple hours' time one would have to take them out again and let the others dirty them, and the rooms had to be done and the beds made every day simply in order that folks should get into them again at night.  There was something in that, of course. But she herself thought one might also look at it in this way: that it was the good happy moments when one had finished one's work that recurred -- when she had finished the morning's work and put the rooms in order, when for instance she had got the stove to burn nicely, with the window still open so that she felt the fresh draught of air through the room -- or when supper was laid in the kitchen with something out of the ordinary and she could call the boys in.  Getting a thing off her hands she had always liked."

 -- from Sigrid Undset's Ida Elizabeth (emphasis mine, because it's just too good)

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