The Last Part of Hurricane Recovery and Good Friday

My house is cleaner than it has been since August.  In August, we started the Great Flooring Project, which would lead to the kitchen remodel, which I thought would last until Halloween.  Why clean between phases when we'd just be generating huge amounts of dust and debris again?

I would not have predicted that this project would end just before Easter.  I might have done more interim cleaning.

Let me hurry to stress that it's not like I haven't cleaned at all.  I've paid the most attention to the bathroom and keeping the floors swept.  But I haven't gotten on my hands and knees to get to the hard-to-reach places or windowsills or parts of the furniture that are close to the floor.  I haven't moved furniture.  And now, I have.

My spouse went to work, and I went to work.  It's not my favorite way of spending a morning off, but there is something satisfying in restoring order to the house.  It makes me wonder if I should do this periodically, take the day off, spend the morning scrubbing, and do something fun in the afternoon.

My fun afternoon event yesterday was getting my sister and nephew from the airport and then returning home at the exact same time as my spouse.  My sister and nephew are the first to see the restored house.  We gave them the tour, and then we spent time outside relaxing by the pool.  It was a fairly perfect afternoon and evening.

I also submitted a poem to Rattle's Poets Respond series, which has poets responding to events in the news.  It will be interesting to see which poem is chosen this week.  My poem responded to the Notre Dame fire.

Today, much of Christendom will celebrate Good Friday, the day that remembers the Crucifixion of Christ. This is the day that no bread can be consecrated. Many Christians will fast today. Some will fast until Easter morning.

We will not be going to church, and in some years, I might have felt sad about that.  This year, I'm happy to miss this service, for reasons I explore in this blog post.  The approach of most Christian churches to the crucifixion is deeply problematic.

I do love this artist's approach to the crucifixion with her Stations of the Cross series.  The artist has used this stations of the cross approach to several social justice issues, like climate change, the southern border immigration crisis, and mass incarceration. It's an interesting way to move away from the traditional ways that Good Friday is so problematic and to think about the ways that systems of domination and empire oppress those with less power.