When I had showered, dressed
and had breakfast, I knew it was time to face re-installing the duvet on my
bed. I say installing because the duvet itself has been cleaned and spent the
summer folded and zipped into a plastic case and the pale blue, flowered duvet
cover, also cleaned, has spent the summer draped over a hanger in my coat
closet. Fine. So what’s the problem? They are both there and ready to go.
It’s me. Armed with some “green”
window cleaner, I’ll drag out the small stepladder and step right up to clean
the chandelier hanging in the foyer. I’ll take books off shelves, dust and line
them up, even clean out my desk with more enthusiasm and confidence than I can
re install that darned duvet each fall. It’s queen sized. Shouldn’t be a
problem, but it is. If there is a secret to this household task—and there must
be—I don’t know it.
I decide to time myself.
And my first attempt at stuffing the sparkling
white duvet into the linen coverlet fails utterly. I simply do not have the
sides lined up correctly. Perhaps if I turn the duvet around? I try again. I
have already spent seven minutes just trying to figure out which is the length
and which is the width of both pieces involved. They seem so much the same.
I try stuffing the duvet in a
second time only to discover that somehow the duvet cover has become twisted,
obliterating any hope of success on this round.
Finally I lay the duvet cover
on the bed, nice and smooth, the end with the closure buttons hanging over the
foot of the bed. Next I lay the duvet over it.
I stand back and stare at the
layers on the bed thinking, now what?
You can do this, Cecily. Anyone can do
this. You just have to breathe and think about it.
I grab the duvet and,
gripping the top edge I throw the rest of its pristine whiteness onto the
floor. I then proceed to stuff the “lead” end of the duvet into the coverlet,
pushing it and dragging it through, shaking the cover as I go.
Enough. I get the whole thing
jammed in there in great lumps and then, grabbing both corner ends of the cover at the
foot of the bed, I shake it as high and as hard as I can, over and over, trying to
get the duvet to fill out its linen envelope. And by now I am laughing. Laughing
and shaking that darned thing up and down. Gradually the duvet begins to
inhabit most of the cover.
Somehow I fail to match up the closing buttons
with the correct holes and I end up at the corner with more holes than
buttons. So I need to begin again. On the second try, I do better. The duvet,
if still somewhat askew, is finally secured within the cover.
The entire process has taken about
twenty minutes.
No need to say this, I’m
certain, but I must. This is not a world peace issue. This is just me bumbling
through a silly household chore much in the way I bumble through so many things
in my life: part determination, part, a pretty steady sense of the ridiculousness
of it all. My own, especially.
 |
| Sent By A Friend Too funny! |
***
We mourn the deaths of the ten
students in Oregon. Many of us wring our hands in despair. President Obama is
angry and so are we. What is it with America that we cannot legislate gun
control? These horrific mass shootings are
our national shame.
