For the end of the day

Did someone say you can have your cake and eat it, too? You can have half and eat half of it, except where the refrigerator rules are first come first served, and in large families where cake never makes it to the refrigerator at all!

It isn't funny that food vanishes fast in families of six or more. (I would have made that five, just to get another "f", but I remember leftovers from five of us — both in the family I grew up in and when there were just three of my own four children.) With six there is always one with a hollow leg or a bottomless pit for a stomach. I seem to remember catch phrases like those pointed in my direction. Let me see, I had an athletic figure in those days until I hit fifty. I must have had a high rate of metabolism back then, but certainly not any longer.

At any rate this was about cake, and not food in general. I bought three pieces of cake from the bakery, a proceeded to prove I could eat half of one and still have my cake (half of it) tomorrow. Well, I still have two pieces for tomorrow. I ate the WHOLE THING!

Why is it the stomach feels so deprived so easily and the brain sympathizes with it so quickly? Enough about cake before the second piece disappears.

During dinner, I witnessed what I believed was a small miracle. I
watched the rain pour down in the side yard, with no sound of rain on the roof or dripping from the eves. Water dripped from the leaves of the two trees in the yard, but not from the one next to the house, the roof, or the bush next to the kitchen window. After ten minutes of this the sun shower was over and I went out to see the miracle close up.

A swath the width of my house was dry in the pavement of the street in front of me. The side yard was wet up to about five feet from the house. The roof was dry except for one corner. On the other side of the house everything was wet and some water still dripped from the eves. Did I fail to mention that the roofers were here today and ripped off the shingles? The bare sheeting was covered with roofing felt, but the new shingles were only on the front end of the house where it rained the hardest. The felt was dry! What an amazing God I (we) have.

About two thirds of the meals I fix are meatless, though I am not a vegetarian. I rarely have to think about getting my five fruits and vegetables what with my salads and soup teaming with them. But the thought just struck me tonight, "Can carrot cake count as a vegetable?" Enough, wandering mind! Write something worth while for a change!

Night stole upon me as I wrote this and I was surprised to look out and see dark windows staring back at me. Rather than end with an abrupt "good night", I turned to my Lawyers Day Book of My Poems. Day 108, an untitled poem (revised slightly) seems appropriate for a time like this.

A Poem For the End of the Day

                                      Forcing thought, thinking right,
                                      Makes me mentally scream.
                                      Writing,
                                      Fighting,
                                      Fluid thoughts flow in a stream
                                      Through my head — what a plight!

                                      Think, O mind, thoughts aright
                                      For the sun is sinking low.
                                      Nothing can last forever,
                                      I know that this is so —
                                      In this life at least —
                                      Where day must turn to night.