Kansas > Oz

I love breakfast dishes and crumby counters and adding 3 cans of water to mix up a juice. I love perusing cook books to plan our meals. I love stocking the pantry, changing toilet paper rolls, and putting remotes where they belong. I love freezing black bananas and boiling carcasses and grinding flour for bread. I love entering all our receipts in a spreadsheet so we can stay on budget. I love to watch the weather out the window.

I love to write checks and letters at my secretary desk and stick stamps on envelopes. I love making things with yarn or paper or fabric or food and delivering those things to neighbors. I love blogging to the sound of tumbling clothes in the dryer and rattling plates in the dishwasher. I love snuggling my dog for a midday nap while the quiet house lets the ticking clock speak. I love busting out my mom duties so that I can squander a few hours with a good book on the comfy corner of the couch. I love my afternoon call from Greg.

I love picking RE up from school and knowing from her facial expression/body language how her day went before she even gets in the car. I love going through piles of papers at the table while RE sings in the hammock one wall and one open window away. I love the squeak of the swing set chains and the trickling hiss of my icemaker refilling itself. I love to hear RE's teenage giggles and teenage music escape from the crack under her bedroom door. I love the tink-tink-tink of Lucy's metal collar tag when she drinks from her stainless steel bowl.

I love how pup races to the back door at 7 when the garage door herks and jerks to signal Greg's triumphant return home. I love doing dinner dishes, walking the dog, and playing dominoes together as a family each evening. I love how my living room walls turn greenish at sunset because they somehow reflect the grass outside. I love Saturday night when the lawn is mowed, the carpets are fluffy, the laundry baskets are empty, and the Day of Rest awaits.

I love family naps on my bed after church. I love when, despite the cast iron skillet attempting to break her wrist, RE surprises us with Dutch Babies, Nutella, and strawberries for a snack. I love how Greg tosses Lucy her hedgehog every night at 10:30 when she is riled up. I love the swooshing Russian Olives outside my bedroom window and the moon over Timp when I am falling asleep. 

There is no place like home and that is why I choose to stay here each day.

*Photo of a floor tile inside Sainte-Chapelle, Paris. Lyric from "A Hard Day's Night" by The Beatles.

The Dorothy Parker poem someone I hardly knew gave me in my college bookbinding class (1996) with this note scribbled on it: As sure as you will have a bungalow and someone to be strung to you are Dorothy Parker.