Then, as I eyed a bowl of cooked carrots speculatively, sizing them up for carrot cake or marinated vegetable salad and opting for the cake which I knew would be seconded by my husband and three sons, I followed the train of my thoughts which was chugging off into philosophical realms led by Archimedes who said, ''Any object placed in a fluid displaces its weight; an immersed object displaces its volume,'' and with that principle to guide me I immersed the lumpy carrots in the milk called for in the recipe and found they made almost exactly the one cup called for. Muttering, along with Emerson, that ''A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds....'' I dumped in a couple of spoonfuls of applesauce to make it come out right .
With the cake in the oven I went into the bathroom-laundry room carrying my new found illuminations about housewives and philosophy with me (Buddha had his Bo tree, I have my refrigerator) and there I faced the endless river of dirty tee shirts, sweat socks, pajamas and underwear, with a quote from Heraclitus. ''You can't step twice in the same river,'' I assured myself as I picked up a pair of jeans and emptied the pockets of bubble gum wrappers, pencils and pennies, and I saw about me the variety in unity and unity in variety spoken of by my aesthetics professor.