and up to my elbow in soapy sink water I came to realized why I've always hated kitchen duty until recently. I can cook in a kitchen by myself. In truth I prefer it. I move to my own pace and would rather not have to say excuse me when someone is standing in front of the cabinet I need to get into. I've never throught cooking was a partnership. My parents didn't prepare meals that way. My Mother cooked the everyday meals and my Father the special ones. However he did leave the cakes, pies, cookies and candies to my Mom on those holidays that called for them. After all of us left home, one would cook. The other one cleaned. Maybe my Father figured out that it is easier to clean up after an ordinary meal then a celebratory one.
In my marriage after all of my kiddies left home. I always cooked. He always cleaned. I've said of Phil that he couldn't boil water without scarching the pan, athough he could cook a mean pit roast that our kid preferred over mine. Even when he did that he still cleaned the kitchen afterwards.
In this house cooking has become a joint venture and it has proved to be FUN. What Lyn and I will do after the boys are gone is another story. The kitchen clean up is also shared with me getting what I would have bemoaned in the past the pots, pans and the stove cleaning. But now I don't think it is so bad. WHY. Because I no longer feels as if I have been sentenced to Outer Mongolia. I'm no longer shut away in a little room by myself. Facing a wall as if I am in time out. Our kitchen is in the center of the house and you can see something.
The meal prep area is not a small space and as you work others while not in you space or in you way are around you talking and carrying on as only young people can do with foolishness and humor.
I have only lived in one house that had a window over the sink so I could look out and let my eyes wonder. And when my eyes wonder my mind follows and that is much more pleasant than simply standing at a sink full of pots and pans facing a wall no matter how well it is decorated with knicky-knacks or tile. Even the trick of putting as mirror on the wall over the sink never helped. Looking at a face pinched in anguish is not pleasant. Doing the dishes under these circumstance was like being punished for something you didn't do. After all, all you did was make a meal that everyone ate, enjoyed to some degree, burped politely, on some occassions not so politely then left you with the mess. Yes I did have my kids do the dishes when they were old enough. But there are all those years before they are and all those years after they have left the nest.
There are dishwashers...... yes and I've had one almost from the time they started making portable ones for homes built before the built-in ones were commonplace. But I've never put my pots and pans in one to clean them.
BUT NOW... I can see. I can see look across the eating area and out a large expanse of glass to the back yard. I can see the fireplace and out the windows on that wall. I can see the stuff that sits on the ledge of the half wall that only partically separates the kitchen from the rest of the living space.
WOW ....All this insight before I had my first cup of coffee.
So I can keep this quilt related. I took myself out of the house yesterday to the library which is becoming one of my favorite places to visit to get some more books on CD since I have listened to all those I had. I also visited the art section and brought home several books for inspiration including one on Mondrian and one on Klee, one on mixed media art, another on weaving and one about a weaver named Anni Anders. No I am not going to start weaving I am just broading my base of knowledge.
I am progressing on the second piece in my Back to Square One series. I had originally sketched it to be larger, but after seeing it on the wall in fabric I think it will be at least two rows shorter than originally drawn. I am sooooo excited.
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