Mr Morley Hits the Nail on the Head

I have a very large collection of quotable quotations that I've put together over the years because, at one time or another, they caught my eye and impressed me for one reason or another. Also, if you quote lots of famous people in your speech and writing, it gives you an air of quasi-erudition without forcing you to go through the mental trauma of coming up with anything original on your own. Rudyard Kipling once unknowingly described me when he wrote of someone that "He wrapped himself in quotations, as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors." I think Ol' Rud and I would have understood each other.

Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was an American author, essayist and poet (from Pennsylvania, no less!) of whom I was relatively unaware until I read this morning in my daily e-mail from Curmudgeon-Online a great quotation attributed to him:

"By the time the youngest children have learned to keep the house tidy, the oldest grandchildren are on hand to tear it to pieces."

Having now nearly eight years of experience in dealing with grandchildren who can reduce a tidy house to rubble faster than a tornado in a trailer park, I believe Mr Morley has hit the nail on its proverbial head. As Agnes and I gear up for the Thanksgiving Family Reunion I wrote about yesterday, part of me asks why I'm bothering to clean the house to white-glove (well, okay, gray-glove) standards when the impending onslaught of grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and children of drop-in friends will make a mockery of the effort in short order. The answer, of course, is that it's just one of those things you've gotta do. After all, it's no fun trashing a house that was already messy, right?

No deep thoughts for today ... just an observation about a few things that seem to go together naturally in the framework of the universe: grandchildren, holidays, and messy houses. The holidays will quickly be only a memory and the grandchildren will grow up too quickly, but you can always put the house back together the way it was.

A quick reminder: if you're in one of the affected localities here in the US, you should have turned your clock back an hour last night to mark the end of Daylight Savings Time. You're welcome.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo