Having been on an Obama high this past week, I found I was humming America the Beautiful as I went about the humdrum tasks of making my bed and walking my dog.

Fortunately, through this blaze of happiness, the husband bought me a new Cuisinart. The old one had bitten the dust.

The distraction of a shiny new appliance, the whirl of its motor and the dreams of puree and chopping brought me down to earth.

I have been Cuising like never before: soups and pates to start. I had chopped and ground far more than I had in the past year if not two years.

A new feeling is in my kitchen – what little there is of a condo kitchen. I wondered briefly if President Obama were contributing to this air of creativity and promise, as evidenced by my new Cuisinart. Didn’t he promise things would be different?

Once, I never dreamed I needed a Cuisinart. My mother never had one and she managed just fine with a mixer. The advent of a blender was a red-letter day back then. I don’t know for sure, but I expect it was shown to visitors with a certain pride, “I have a new blender.”

There was the rubber spatula that came along in the Forties. My, how that revolutionized scraping!

Mother’s generation and part of mine whipped by hand with no copper bowls to mound up egg whites either. They were a strong generation, facing kitchen chores with expectation of muscle use and long standing before stoves and sinks.

A dishwasher came into my life in the 1960s, a dryer in late 1955. I felt liberated.

Now, most chores are electrified. My kitchen blinks with appliances when I turn off overhead lights.

The radar range seems to signal, “Use me. I’m ready.” The toaster never sleeps. The phone lights my way to call day or night, off shore or on. The Cuisinart has no lights, but I know it stands silently knowing that a mere turn on switch will do all those things I now think I need to do.

Someone might ask me, “If you are in such praise of the past, why don’t you dump all those appliances and get back to using your muscles?”

I reply, “Have you lost your mind?”

I think of those devices as saving labor, those little red and yellow blinkers friendly reminders of machines that will do my bidding.

So, what if my mother never made a pate, carrot soup or eggplant caviar? Who in her crowd did? No one.

The culinary bar has been raised and I am elevated too. If I admitted it, my Cuisinart is fun, yes fun. It’s a new sound amid the buzzes and beeps. It’s a shiny addition to my life, and it likes me.

Here, you may add, “She’s lost her mind, at last.”

Those who have cooked as long as I know the blessed feeling when you have a pal in the kitchen.

I have a buddy in my Mr. Coffee. It never acts up and gives me good coffee each morning. I consider my toaster oven an ally in need, serving me light-to-dark toast at my whim.

My oven is self-cleaning. Now’s that’s a friend.

Did I mention my garbage disposal? I meant to. Though cranky at times, it comes to its senses eventually and cleans up my peels, skins, and dish debris.

So, here’s to my appliances, may they continue to run smoothly and feel good about themselves at the same time.

And here’s to you, Mr. President. May you to continue to run the country smoothly and feel good about yourself at the same time.

Sally Robison is a Winslow artist and the author of “The Permanent Guest’s Guide to Bainbridge Island.