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Show THE HAPPY HOME By MARGARET BRUCE V.VVV.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.V.VV W.N V Service The Mid-Day Siesta In all the very hot countries, the entire en-tire population takes a "siesta" In the middle of the day. It is a scheme which the busy housewife may very well adopt, especially during the late summer days when every effort seems to be a burden. To keep going all day long often means an Impatient, touchy mother by dinner time, but a quiet siesta, spent lu complete relaxation in iounging chair or hammock, even if one doesn't sleep, means that the warmest part of the day passes her by. During our vacation days we all idle more or less, for we are relieved of the housework while at a hotel or summer sum-mer resort and have long hours to sit on the beach or swiug beneath the apple trees. When we come back, we shouldu't plunge at once into all-day continuous work, but try to carry the vacation across into the following few weeks until we feel like tackling a full day's work again. "I feel so lazy and guilty if I lie around reading when there is so much to be done," protests the conscientious housewife. Rut resting isn't laziness, and the complete relaxation which you get when lying down, or reclining, reading read-ing not too seriously, aud perhaps doz- ing, is very different from "resting" by Eitting upright doing filet crochet or some other handwork. On some days, the hottest hour comes around four o'clock in the afternoon, after-noon, and If this is so, save your siesta until then. But ordinarily a good time to take it is immediately after luncheon, before Interruptions occur and while the weariness from the morning's work still holds on. From the Bottom Up Mrs. Jimmy looked across the breakfast break-fast table at her liege lord. She was 15.14 sipping her coffee slowly and looking look-ing at him critically. crit-ically. He was very good looking, she mused proudly, proud-ly, and wore his clothes so well. Yet, as she gazed, she noticed that the shirt he was wearing was one he seemed to wear very often, and it was even getting a bit worn looking around the collar. She set down her, cup. "Jimmy," she said, "why do you wear the same shirts all. the time? You have a great drawer of them in your chiffonier. Some of them I never see you wear at all. But every other week you have this same one on for a couple of days. Why do you wear It so often?" Jimmy looked down at it vaguely. "Why, I don't know," he said ; "it's always right on top when I open the drawer." That opened Mrs. Jimmy's eyes. She herself put Jimmy's shirts away each week when they came from the laundry, laun-dry, laying them hi carefully in two piles. It was her doing, then. So the next week she adopted a new scheme. When the clean ciothes came home, she worked from the bottom instead of the top. Jimmy's clean shirts were placed not on top of the others, but beneath them. The same with his handkerchiefs, the same with his "bee-' "bee-' veedees." as lie spelled them. The unused ones at rhe bot"om began to creep nearer the top. giving the older ones a rest and getting each used in rotation. Then she took the same method into her own realm, ohe put her fresh underwear un-derwear and nightgowns away not on top of the supply in the drawer but underneath it. Into the linen closet she went, putting sheets, towels and pillow cases at the bottom of the piles Instead of on top of Them. A few articles had beet- getting all the wear while others were growing yellow from disuse. Jimmy began to look spiffy In shirts he had forgotten he had. "Men always al-ways take the article nearest at hand," murmured Mrs. Jimmy, as she tucked the well-worn pajamas at the bottom and laid a new pair were they would meet Jimmy's sleepy hand next time he changed. (Copyright.) |
