Patience above! We spent all of yesterday tidying up the house in anticipation of a visit from Brother #4 et. al. this Thursday. While Someone shampooed all the rugs I moved the back porch furniture out into the yard to give all a thorough cleaning and dusting. Who can say when the carpets were last cleaned and was last October when I last minded the patio furniture? Oh the horror. It was some job; it took all day. Last night before crashing I sat outside in the now-cleaned porch area and felt good about my industry. 

I am starting each day now with the expressions “Amor fati” and “Momento Mori”.  Amor fati is Latin “love of one’s fate”.* It is an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life including loss and suffering as something that can be embraced to teach something. Even bad things can have meaning derived from then. 

Memento mori  is Latin for for ‘remember that you [have to] die’.  This keeps me on my toes and don’t delay the good things and put ‘drama’ into perspective. 

They make a curious couple these two, almost a paradox: I embrace the day with all it has as I think upon my mortally. 

I brought back from Michigan a black metal recipe box which I thought was my mother’s but upon careful inspection the contents are her mother’s. Most of the recipes were not worth keeping – a disappointment –  or my mother had passed them onto me already. Curious! Grandmother wrote her recipes or pasted newspaper clippings on the back of whatever pieces of paper were at hand. One was a stylish card requesting an RSVP for a wedding reception. It turns out it was for my parent’s wedding; Father recognized it right away when I read it to him. I will keep this card although the recipe on its back – for baked beans! – is of no value. 

Today we have to put back all the furniture we moved about for shampooing the rugs. As the main bed was piled up we slept in the guest room A.K.A. The Dragon Room, with its quaint queen-size bed. We both like space in a bed, preferring a radius of 300 miles between me and the next one, so it was rather snug, especially when you add a pooch that is not used to sleeping in The Dragon Room. The night resembled the Indi-Pakastani border as to which nation claims the no-man’s land in the middle. I daresay we will sleep soundly tonight when the proper bed is back in place. 

*Latin-scholars and clever-dicks are welcome to correct me if needed.