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Here's mud in your eye
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Here's mud in your eye
  I thought I’d write this week about a subject that’s been much on my mind (and kitchen floor) lately – mud. Micheal and I are thinking of opening a Mud Bath in the back yard. Guests may make reservations to come and bathe in our mud, which we will claim has healing powers.  Before they leave we’ll give them a stimulating cool shower (we have to think of something grander to call the garden hose), in such a manner that the mud flows off them and back into our yard, because we don’t want to lose all our capital. It’s difficult to think of ways to dress this up so that it sounds like a spa treatment. Perhaps we’ll go quaint and rustic with it, instead. Call it the Boddy Mud Waller, and invite people to wrestle Joe Big Dog in it – Joe would adore that. The unceasing rains of this winter make it hard to remember, or believe, that we had drought last summer. I’m willing to swear, at this point, that my back yard has never been, and never will be, dry. These rains also make me wonder what kind of summer we’ll have this year – hot and dry like the last one, or cool and wet like the one in 2007?  Finally, a lot of rain always sets me wondering what will happen if it doesn’t stop. In the Los Angeles area, an inch of rain causes flooding and rich peoples’ houses slide off their hills. I imagine rainy nights keep those folks awake, worrying about where they’ll be living in the morning – on their hill, or at the bottom of it.  I sleep like a lamb on rainy nights. Here on the coastal flats, it would have to rain a whole lot more than this to accomplish anything so drastic, and even then, our houses wouldn’t slide because – well, coastal flats, you know. They might float, I suppose. In that case, I guess we’d all go drifting out to sea. The Last Homely House has never admitted water, but I’m not too sure of its seaworthiness. The cats and dog would miss having a yard if the house turned into a houseboat. On the bright side, mud wouldn’t get tracked into the house every time the door opens. There, I’ve come back to mud again. Mud has pretty much taken over my thoughts and activities this winter. I even dreamed about it one night – a nightmare, in which mud that I ceaselessly mopped from the kitchen floor reappeared every time I turned to rinse the mop in the sink.  The legend that the Inuits have more than 200 words for snow is, I believe, grossly exaggerated. Nevertheless, I have learned to identify many different types of mud this winter. There’s the thin, wet, splattery mud that Joe brings in on rainy days and which must be sponged off the cabinet doors as well as mopped from the floor.  There’s the dryer, thicker mud he brings in on the days between rains, which must be swept, or even scraped, from the floor before being mopped. There’s the stealth mud - clay that combines with leaves and grass to form a nice thatch that can go unnoticed until it falls off the grandboy’s shoes, right after I’ve swept and mopped. And yes, I have names for the different types of mud I’ve identified, but they’re not new words, and shouldn’t be used in public.  I’ve begun greeting people at our door with Nana Oyl’s line from the movie “Popeye”: “Come in before you catch your death of mud.” If you google mud, you’ll find that MUD can stand for “municipal utility district” or “multi-user dungeon” in online gaming. It’s the name of a band. In Florida, mud-bogging is a popular off-road sport. We all know about mud wrestling, nude or clothed. I think that’s all I have to say about mud. I’m going to go google ark-building.  |
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