Trolls are not nice people

It’s March. It will soon be March Madness and people will be mad for basketball. They’ll go mad for their team and their picks. They'll cheer and shout and love this month.  But March is not a good month for me. I am just mad. I hate the month of March and most of the month of April. I’m cranky and out of sorts and nothing makes me happy. It’s warm(er) outside so that means nordic skiing is pretty much over, but the hiking trails are either still blocked with snow or too muddy to step foot on. The time changes, so instead of getting up and driving to work in daylight, I'll do that in the dark again. What’s the point of a longer day if it’s too wet and muddy outside to do anything?

To make matters worse my job has been so boring lately that staying upright in my chair has been a feat of Herculean effort, made possible only by the few licorice lentils I allow myself when I feel a coma coming on. On top of that, our yearly blood chemistry results came in the mail yesterday and my bad cholesterol is up a little from last year. So now when I eat those lentils, I’m going to do it with even greater guilt, resulting in an even madder me. But I have to eat them, because if I don’t, I might not be able to control the resulting sloom drool and I’m pretty sure there’s an office policy prohibiting drool on keyboards.

For me, cleaning the house and kneading bread are good ways to get rid of a bit of the stay away from me, life stinks feelings I always experience this time of year. Yesterday, to try and make myself feel better (and improve the odds of maintaining my marital status), I did both. I cleaned the house, and I mixed up, kneaded vigorously, and baked sourdough onion bread. After five hours the house was clean, the bread was cooling on the kitchen counter, and I was feeling a whole lot better.  I even felt a smile pushing its way to the surface as I went downstairs to pull freshly washed rugs from the dryer.  I love newly laundered rugs.  Rugs with no grease splatters on them, no animal fur, no food bits.  I love clean rugs almost as much as crawling into clean sheets on Sunday night.  I carried the rugs upstairs feeling better than I had for days. As I started laying them on the kitchen floor, I noticed that where there had been two loaves of bread when I had gone downstairs to get the rugs, now there were only onion bits and one.  Damn that dog!  That pretty much canceled out any improvement I'd managed to make in my mental outlook.

Either she doesn't like onion, or she only had time to grab and run with it before we interrupted her afternoon refreshment because there was only dog drool, no missing chunks.  And Dean wonders why Shadow and I are not friends.....

So, as I said, it’s the month of madness and I've been mad. But there are all kinds of madness. There was a time when one madness led me to another madness which led my whole family to yet another madness.

In 1981, during a previous oil and gas boom, Dean and I were renting a house in Rock Springs owned by an ancient and evil troll who lived two houses away. This evil troll called us over one night, and with soft cheese sticking to his false teeth, he sat with hands on his TV tray and said to us, "the grass in the yard of the house I am allowing you to rent from me is 1/32 of an inch too long.” It so happened that it was my job to mow the lawn due to the fact that I was a stay-at-home-mother of two young daughters with nothing to do, and Dean was required to sit at a computer and lift a heavy mouse all day. “But Mr. Ancient Evil Troll”, I said. “I have two young daughters. One is but but six months old. I must mow while she sleeps and she sleeps so little.” “I care not!”, snarled the troll, as soft chunks of cheese fell out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin.  I got mad.  "I'll show you", I said to myself.  And instead of personally placing the next montly rent check in the evil troll's gnarled hand, I put it in an envelope, stomped down to the post office, and mailed it.  This did not set well with the troll.  “Be gone!” he bellowed as spittle flew out of his mouth.  "Leave this place!"  And we did. 

However, due to the oil and gas boom, there were few places available to rent, and greed was king.  We had no other choice than to explore other options.  On December 1, 1981 we moved here. 

Over 40 miles from the nearest town.

And stayed for nine months.

With no electricity. With no natural gas.  With no running water. With no ability to communicate with the outside world.  But with no evil trolls. 

                                                   Laundry day.

Maybe sometime, if I sense any interest, or I just feel like writing, I will tell you about the time I thought we were going to die, in our truck, stuck between two snowdrifts.   Or about the day I butchered my first (and last) chicken all by myself.  Or the day I almost killed (unintentionally, of course) my youngest child.  Or what I did that time when drifted highways kept Dean in town for two days. And I had run out of firewood. And the wind was howling. And the temperature was below zero. And I was alone. With my children. 40 miles from nowhere. Or maybe I'll tell you what cabin fever REALLY means.  If you're interestered.

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Trolls are not nice people