The mailman makes me happy

At least, he does when he rings my doorbell and hands me a box with my Amazon order in it! The best part is, I only paid $7.89 for all this!



I can't wait to read Keeping House. A little blurb from the flyleaf explains why I'm so interested: Debunking the commonly held notion that keeping house is a waste of time or at best a hobby, Peterson uncovers the broader cultural and theological factors that make housekeeping an interesting and worthwhile discipline. She reveals how the seemingly ordinary tasks of folding laundry, buying groceries, cooking, making beds, and offering hospitality can be seen as spiritual practices that embody and express concrete and positive ways of living out Christian faith in relationship to others at home, in the church, and in the world.

Wow. And, um, anything that can help make housekeeping seem more spiritual has my attention!

I haven't had time yet to really scour my new cookbook, but I did flip to the back chapter of miscellaneous recipes and tips. There is a recipe for homemade laundry soap that uses 16 pounds of meat scraps. Meat scraps. Because, you know, nothing makes you feel clean like washing your nice clothing in something made from scraps of meat (and a few other ingredients, one of which has the word caustic in it). This will definitely be a fun read!

And last, the new Simon & Garfunkel CD had me feeling like a special kind of idiot. It's a 2-CD set. And I couldn't figure out how to open the darned thing to get to the second CD. I opened it like so:



Then I spent a good 5 minutes (no exaggeration there) staring at it and gently tugging at various parts of plastic before I finally figured out how it opens further.



But hey, I needed a mental challenge for the day because, so far, my laundry is not providing that. But maybe it would if I tried washing it with meat scraps.