Simple Pleasures

Well, I got to Malette's, Dogsitting Central, only to find that Percy had messed his kennel - and did a pretty danged thorough job of it, too. So I got to muck it out. Praise the Lord for removeable floor trays. (By the way, this was not a simple pleasure. I'll get to that.) Then, I spent about two hours experimenting with various odor-removal techniques, since the kennel sits right in front of the air conditioner. Meanwhile, I did the Weather-Anticipation tango, trying to get the dogs walked and watered between afternoon showers and evening thunderstorms. I forgot to eat until around 10pm. But by the time I went to bed to read at around 11, I was pleasantly tuckered.

I normally sleep on my side, legs bent at a slight angle, and occasionally wake halfway and roll over to the other side for a few hours. This morning at around 1:30, I had a rollover impulse and found myself coming fully awake, unable to move my lower body. Not knowing where I was, I freaked out for a moment. I looked down and found Hudson lying along my front side, cozied up against my kneecaps. Percy was curled into a perfect oblong in the angle formed by my thighs and calves. Both of them sensed my movement, lifting heads with perked ears and turning their amber eyes on me curiously. I got a bit teary with that flood of warmth that only comes from a dog. I stretched to alleviate the soreness in my hip, but pretty much stayed where I was. Sometimes love is worth a little discomfort.

This morning, I came home and finally yanked the weed whacker out of my trunk to tackle those "boundary areas" of the lawn. I thought a bit (Jan-style) about threshholds, the places where wall meets ground, where pieces of land come together, where the organic chaos of grass meets the smooth order of sidewalk. No great revelations came. I mostly just enjoyed watching the weeds fall, the tension in my arms as I maneuvered the spinning plastic string, the way the lawn's beauty got kicked up a notch like the difference between a remade bed and one that features fresh, crisp sheets, starched a little and folded at the corners so you could bounce a quarter off it.

I'm reminded of Matt's new song, Labor et Orans. The title is latin for "work and pray." It's an intsrumental track, one where Matt used loops running at different lengths and speeds and frequencies, and is ordered but somehow chaotic at the same time. I love it. It's like life. I think work and prayer are more often than not the same thing - or at least they ought to be. A simple task done simply can be very full of God.

And now, I'd better get back to the dogs before they do something unlovely.