Coming out of the (broom) closet

Until I read an article by Alice Walker in which she confessed the same obsession, I was always a bit sheepish to admit that I love to sweep. It's such a banal domestic chore, but I find it incredibly soothing and meditative.

At the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin festival a few years ago, I met my broom groom, a Mr. Thurman Scheumack, of BroomMagic.com, who makes these fines lovelies by hand:

Broom Magic

Chris bought me one, and one for the girls, both monogrammed, and both residing in our SF kitchen right now.  Meanwhile, I'm left pining, (ha,) and settling for a cheap and unsatisfying substitute, a yellow metal-handled option that really isn't treating me right. To be honest, I'm not treating it much better — I let Busta' Sneef chew on it daily.

Yesterday the girls and I were hanging out in the front yard carving pumpkins when I kicked through a leaf pile and stumbled over a rake, something I haven't held since high school. As I scraped it across our grass I was overtaken with this visceral pleasure — a cross between hair-brushing and leaf-bouncing. If raking is sweeping's cousin, it's from a better family. And the best thing is that unlike sweeping, which results in a pile of unpleasant household flotsam, raking rewards you with a heap of leaves to play in. I got so crazy that when I finished our yard, I raked our neighbors.

As I write this, I know it sounds so simplistic, but I often find the deepest pleasure - or frustration - in the rote and routine. I'm all for more of the former.