God wants us to take vacation days.

Some simple things to do during a slow day at home:

Cook and eat Irish steel cut oats and golden California raisins while re-reading sections of a great book about pH balance and nutrition.

Not get up when breakfast is over. Instead, savor a seed saver’s story along with a steamy cup of freshly roasted, fairly traded, organic Sumatran coffee.

Clean a month’s, maybe two months’ worth of papers, flyers, business cards, small change, receipts, and miscellaneous pocket treasures off of the dresser.

Satellite shop for a knob to replace the broken one on the dryer, and some “Type T” bags for the old Royal upright vacuum cleaner, after first researching multiple local vendors and dutifully calling them, without any luck, before placing an order online.

Sweep the kitchen and bathroom floors while completing a load of laundry, and decide to plug in the drill gun charger, so that tomorrow, we can create a 1/4 inch hole in the broom handle to match the nail that we put in the utility closet wall over two years ago.

Enjoy a salad of sliced Ohio gala apple, baby kale, and roasted pumpkin seeds with balsamic vinaigrette, while listening to Gato Barbieri and Nana Vasconcelos.

Glue together some more window-setting shims, in the continuance of an ongoing project to manufacture multiple large wedges that can later be used with belt clamps to compress the bottom of a cracked conga drum during gluing.

Locate the leather needles, thimbles and wax thread, that we have carried from place to place since we first began working with leather and canvas as a teenager, and then spend the balance of the cloudy and damp, but mostly rainless, day on the back porch, repairing a badly torn drum bag.

Do such a good job that it becomes necessary to go through the kitchen drawers to find an old zipper pull, patch the emerging hole in the bag’s plastic base with a piece of vinyl purloined from a shopping bag bottom and some black contractor’s duct tape, and use multiple pliers to repair the broken catch for the shoulder strap.

Admire the “new” bag for a few minutes, then toss it on the floor, next to the other gig bags and percussion instruments, so we can play along with Solomon Illori’s “African High Life” on Pandora Radio.

Slice and steam a local cabbage with some baby kale, herbs, sunflower seeds and garlic, then make ginger tea, set the table for dinner and go back to Janisse Ray’s lovely “The Seed Underground” for a spell.

Wash a few dishes, make some more tea, grab a handful of cherries and sit quietly, in the blue screen light, to reflect & write, pray, savor the day.

Like elephant house & home on Facebook.

Asst. Ed. Renee Picard/Ed. Bryonie Wise