Wild strawberry vines, green and voracious with the summer sun, creep their way past a stack of stainless steel napkin holders that long before served their utilitarian purpose. Now they symbolize to me (and probably our neighbors) just how busy the Geiger family has been these last few months, for it isn’t just two, deteriorating cardboard boxes filled with unused napkin dispensers that line our driveway, but it is also three booths covered by a sturdy blue tarp, a hand sink (which now doubles as a birdbath and a curiosity to my one-year-old), and towers of paint cans, leftovers from the restaurant renovation, reminders of a phase of our lives now past.
Today was Matt’s day off, one of very few he gets to take these days, and we enjoyed it, lounging around until noon with Mia, then devoting three strong hours to cleaning and reorganizing the garage and driveway (Mia helped too, but mainly sunbathed in the blue, plastic kiddie pool I bought her at Babies R Us with one last remaining gift card given at a baby shower). It had to be done, not only because we were the disgrace of the neighborhood, but also because it is time to move on and to focus our efforts on the business of running the restaurant. There of course isn’t anything glamorous about owning a restaurant. Matt works twelve to fourteen hour days everyday of the week, and since we opened in April, he has taken only one other full day off. He’s a maniac, a committed, sweet, and wonderful one, but a maniac just the same. It’s amazing how freeing cleaning can be -- I suppose that’s why so many television shows are devoted to its powers. Spiritually, mentally, and physically one is lifted from certain burdensome thoughts and feelings when an area is cleaned. I suppose that’s why Thoreau didn’t like to have too much stuff around -- I guess it made it easier to suck the marrow out of life when there was less to clean.Today, in our own way, we simplified things.
