#13 A WORD SERIES: QUOTIDIAN

#.  WORD - QUOTIDIAN

It was a Monday filled with being busy. I should have written about it then, but I was preoccupied with things quotidian.

It’s likely you know this word: Quotidian. It came to English via Latin to Old French to Middle English, all of it to describe “happening daily.” It’s always an adjective so it really doesn’t have legs of its own to stand on but it manages to hitch a ride on a variety of nouns: tasks, exercise, foodstuff, bodily functions, observations, even attitudes. You name a noun? It could be quotidian.

Any tourist can be deemed dumb by the dense and dangerous free-for-all traffic circling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. Twelve grand avenues; twelve (!), including the Champs-Élysées, feed ten unlined car lanes belonging to the Place Charles de Gaulle roundabout where departing cars compete with on-coming vehicles that have the right-away. By the way, right in the middle of that roundabout is a tomb. If that can’t cause caution in the circle, nothing can. I say, tourists best take a bus.

I mention this because for our French kid in whose car I was cringing, this chaotic challenge was “quotidian.” That is, “of or occurring every day,” even humdrum or dull, as the definition allows. But what about this?

  Angel’s Landing, Zion National Park, Utah

 On Mother’s Day Sunday, my husband climbed this 190-million-year-old Navajo Sandstone monolith with its 1000’ drop-offs. There, at the peak’s peak, in memory of our late son-in-law, David wedged a particular pebble between rough layers of the peak’s single sand-blasted boulder. Not a single step of this hike of his can be called quotidian.

A CHIPMUNK OVERSEES DAVE’S PEBBLE PLACEMENT

Time to dull down. On Monday, as David traveled toward home, I was, as I usually am, up at about 5a.m. As usual, I made coffee. I sprayed the Asparagus ferns outside our apartment’s front door. They, and my balcony gardenia that refuses to bloom, need constant hydration. Quotidian.

 I filled the bird feeder, watered other balcony plants, and as I do nearly daily, urged my seven-years-ago-seed-planted avocado trees to please bear fruit (apparently not).

 I opened window blinds, jotted a note in my calendar, decided what book to open first, and told Scooter, “No, it isn’t time to play.” Quotidian tasks.

NO! NOT NOW

While I was at our balcony in the pre-dawn darkness, did I notice the bright Robins’ voices shouting out from the woods? Their song is quotidian, so satisfying; natural sounds sent to my world otherwise crowded with concrete and plastics, and glass, and computerized everything, LED lights, and metals, and generated voices, and mechanized hums, and the utterly artificial Siri that rather than people, answers my questions. Dear goodness, I hope I remembered to thank the Robins.

 At my desk that Monday morning I noticed the succulents at my office window needed water. I watered them. I warmed my coffee, returned to my desk to answer a publisher’s question then, on the way to feeding Scooter breakfast (quotidian), I searched for my rice-cooked-with-coconut milk recipe because I have coconut milk left over from a recent recipe, and I don’t like to freeze the stuff. It never turns out nicely from the freezer. That reminded me—I also had left-over sour cream after recently making a pound cake for a fund-raiser, and what do we Pines have to do with sour cream? Very little.

 So, as is common with the human species, I got distracted (quotidian). I found myself measuring ingredients for sour cream scones, placing those things in the refrigerator because it’s best to keep scone ingredients cold, what with all that butter – I will get to making scones and coconut rice later in the day but while I was at the refrigerator, I pulled out fruit for my breakfast, and noticed that not only do we need oranges (go write that on the grocery list), but the fruit drawer needed a good wiping out, which I did. That turned my thoughts to the terrible news about a widespread disease in America’s citrus groves. If you’re a philosophical determinist, it’s all cause and effect. Right?

 As I closed the refrigerator doors, wondering what to cook for tired Dave’s dinner tonight, I remembered to start the washing machine holding sheets. It would be nice for his tired body to fall onto the feel of freshness. Only then did I take time to acknowledge Scooter’s plea for play before his breakfast (that I had been distracted from). Dang. His kibble container was very nearly empty, but we have a 26.5lb bag of Scooter’s food under our bed, so while he ate, I pulled the big bag out and refilled the container. Quotidian in a second definition way – humdrum, dull.

Life is so daily; what with tending to repetitive tasks and distractions. Easy it is to miss gifts the day may bring. On the first of his daily outings, Scooter tolerated the crow that teases him and from the trees says “Maa” to me before he gives me a fly-by, and accepts a peanut (or three).

Scooter barked at a gaggle of Canada geese as we neared a neighborhood retention pond . . .

 . . .Around the pond we went where at water’s edge we watched a red-winged blackbird bounce the tender tree branch where it landed. Its landings are so quotidian but, Oh! , that flash of red in the wing! Like the flashes of petunia red at our balcony. Do I notice? Do I let natural sights and color settle my soul?  

PETUNIAS

The newly planted crabapple trees near the pond are loaded with blossoms. The morning is beautiful. I counted a surviving seven baby Mallard ducklings following their mama with the swift kicks of their tiny, webbed feet. They move like rockets.

MALLARDS

 Quotidian they are, these actions of living things, these gifts from our natural world, but never, never, dull or humdrum. How many petals on a dogwood blossom? Scooter and I stopped to see, but David will be home in several hours, and I have many quotidian things to do.

Oh! There at our apartment door was a small piece of my favorite candy, Snickers (Dave has been warned-it’s mine. I’m sure it’s for me). What a pleasing surprise! Hopefully the anonymous giver reads the blog, and accepts my thanks. I’d save a bite for Dave but he’s such a food purist . . . you know.

Snickers candy