It feels more like spring/fall than summer around here (though today is the summer solstice) so I made an apple pie on Thursday night. I was pretty sick last week, and didn't slow down like I should have--I kept going to the gym, kept going to work--so although the sore throat and congestion are long gone, I still felt worn out well into this week. On Thursday night, Stephen went out with friends, but I stayed in and sliced apples while listening to NPR. It was incredibly restorative. The smell of cinnamony things baking can correct a multitude of wrongs.Making pie always reminds me of my first grade class back at Duzine Elementary. During Writer's Workshop one day, I raised my hand to ask the teacher how to spell "pie". She told me to try sounding it out first. So I did what you're supposed to do when you sound things out: I went through the word, sound by sound, writing each out phonetically.
What sound does it start with? Pa.
And then that vowel sound. Ie, clearly.
But if you say the word reeaally slowly, as you do when you're sounding it out, you'll notice that there's also a quiet ya that follows the ie sound.
Therefore: paieya.
My teacher had to laugh when she saw what I had written: "Way too many letters!" I remember thinking, after she spelled it correctly for me, that it would have been much easier for both of us if she had just told me the three letters to begin with.
My June book has got me thinking about housekeeping and homemaking. I don't know what the "real" difference is between those words, but to me, housekeeping is managing logistics: paying bills, changing the smoke detector batteries, putting up storm windows. The stuff that maintains the house as a functioning structure. Homemaking is much more abstract, complex, emotional, personal--the process of making the house into a home. Making the bed, planting a garden, baking bread, making conversation, sitting and reading. Certainly, there's a lot of overlap in the housekeeping/homemaking Venn diagram: taking out the garbage, for instance, is something that must be done, per contract with the landlord (ergo, housekeeping), and also makes the house much more pleasant to live in (homemaking).What surprises me is how much I like doing the homemaking stuff. I guess, on some level, as old-fashioned as it sounds, I identify as a homemaker. Not full-time, clearly, but perhaps a homemaking... amateur? enthusiast? dilettante? Shouldn't be surprising, really, since every woman in my family subscribes to Martha Stewart Living, and we all love to bake. It's just something I've never put a name to, I guess.
