Kitchen or the Egg

I love the way Jenny Joseph’s Poem, “Warning” weaves in and out of my life. I thought of it again this morning. Here’s an excerpt:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

So, this morning I was in the downstairs bathroom and noticed the sink was covered in blue, a casualty of Quinn’s earlier mission of washing her hands “All by myself, mom!!” after painting gourds. And her palms. My habit was to say (really!), “I’ll wash that ‘when I clean the sink.’” As in later, not now.

I do that all the time. I create a reason to “get out” of doing something because arbitrarily I consider it not to be the right time to do it. Plus, I figure when I’m really focused on doing the thing, such as cleaning the sink, I’ll do *such* a better job on it then, since that’s the job I’ll be focusing on, instead of just doing a quick “non-good-job” wipedown.

Then I remembered that poem for some reason. “When I am old, I shall…”

I cracked up realizing this. “Great, Erica. So, when you are old, you’ll clean this sink?”

So I turned around and got the spray cleaner and sponge and cleaned the sink. Right then.

The poem ends:
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Might as well start now. I don’t want to shock anyone later when my house starts looking immaculate. ; )

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.