Running From Thor

I have a secret I'm ashamed to share.  And since I'm so ashamed I am illogically sharing it with the world.  I have been wishing for a nasty weather day.  Yes, one of those days that are dreary and cold(ish) and drizzly and cloudy and it's impossible for you to do anything other than stay inside quilting and watching Uncle Buck or Turner and Hooch or Drum Line or The Quiet Man ... or all of them.  A day when the weather is so bad you are forced to stay inside and bake bread or cookies or muffins ... or all of them.   A bleak day when you can eat your freshly baked muffin in front of the TV guilt-free.  There.  I've said it.  I need a break from the progression of nearly perfect days we've been having.

It's not that I want it to snow.  I'm not ready for blizzards and wind and freezing temperatures.  I don't like that it's dark when I wake up in the morning and is dark before 8 p.m.  I love autumn and its warm days and cool nights.  I love sunshine.  But enough is enough.  The pressure to be outside and take advantage of the fine weather is beginning to overwhelm me.  And the guilt if I am not hiking or canoeing or working in the yard or taking walks or sitting on the deck or just plain enjoying this awesome weather is weighing me down.

It's not that I haven't been taking advantage of this incredible fall weather.  Last weekend I decided to do my part in the yard upkeep department.  I don't like yard work.  Oh, sure, I get excited when the first tulip leaves pop up through the snow.  And I feel as bad as everybody else when the daffodils are hanging their heads under six inches of snow.  I even kind of enjoy mowing the lawn the first couple of times during the spring.  But on the whole I would be perfectly happy and content never mowing a lawn, planting a garden, or weeding a flower bed again.  Isn't that why artificial turf and  men were invented?

However, since I do have a propensity for guilt, as I said, I did my part last weekend.  I did some weeding in the flower beds and as I finished one area, I looked over at the raspberry bushes.  About a month ago the bushes liked like this.  I was whining about them migrating into and taking over the grass in the backyard.

Anybody out there want to share their raspberry disease expertise?

Within the last month they developed some kind of disease and began to die.  So many died that I couldn't stand looking at all the dead leaves.  My clutter gene took over and I started hacking the dead canes out.  It was like eating potato chips.  Once I cut out the first dead cane, I couldn't stop until all the dead wood was gone. 

Throwing any type of organic material away is a federal offense in this house so hours later, after the yard was strewn  with dead raspberry canes flecked with blood from my scratched up arms, I started hauling them to the compost pile.  Unfortunately, since they were diseased Dean said I couldn't put them in his compost.  That meant I had to first drag them back out of the compost, and then cut up a bajillion canes of raspberries into a trajillion six or eight-inch lengths so I could lay them carefully into flimsy white garbage bags and toss them into the garbage.  I wish I had a picture to show you but my fingers were bent into a permanent garden clipper position by the time I was finished and I couldn't push the camera button.

The good news is, if they're going to insist on dying, our migrating raspberry bush issue may be over.  The bad news is, four hours of weeding and raspberry chopping did not relieve my “please, just one nasty day” guilt.

Because our summers are so short it's a frantic marathon to do all those awesome summer things before the blizzards and icy winds roll in.  But I'm beginning to wear out. Enough is enough.  I just need a break.  Just one day to hunker down with rain pelting on the windows.  But no.  Those perfect days just just keep coming. And every moment I'm not outside adds to my guilt. 

My arms weren't red from the welts I get when I touch the pine bush when I mow; and they weren't speckled in bits of red blood from an errant raspberry cane, but I was wearing red yesterday, and we were outside, and we did our best to make the most of a picture perfect fall day.

Final Score 38-14 ... Go Huskers!

Once again today is another in the never-ending string of “this is why we live in Wyoming” days.  A day I should be outside.  Not in here.  At a computer.  Typing.  The forecast shows no break in the weather.  Days and days of continuing warm days, cool nights and bright sunshine.  The increasing shame weighing on me because I should be outside on this magnificent fall day has nearly incapacitated me. Before I am completely exhausted by these beautiful days, and immobilized by my guilt, I must go stand on the deck, in the sun.

I will watch Dean work in the garden until I recoup my strength.  Or until I am struck down by lightening for even harboring the thought of a less than perfect day.  Wait a minute, lightening means rain ...

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Running From Thor

I Knew There Was A Reason I Kept Him

For the past three years I have been using the birthday money my dad sends me to buy myself a cup of coffee on my way to work. I put my birthday money in a sandwich baggie and store it safely in that special place in my car especially designed to store CDs and baggies filled with birthday money. Then once a week, until the baggie is empty, I buy myself a special birthday money coffee.

I have designated Friday as my special birthday money coffee day. I’m not sure why I chose Friday. I should probably have chosen Monday. What could be better than starting the week with a special birthday money coffee? A special coffee I could drink without feeling guilty for spending money on something I could very well have made myself for 1/100th of the cost. Or maybe I should have chosen Wednesday. Wednesday would be a good birthday money coffee day. It would be a special treat to break up the long, arduous work week.

But I didn’t choose Monday or Wednesday. I chose Friday. It’s become my tradition now. It’s my habit; my compulsion; my own special obsession. I can’t change it. I can’t. Not without some birthday money coffee therapy anyway. But birthday money coffee therapy would cost money so then I’d need guilt therapy because I don’t think I could cope with the guilt of spending money on therapy. The guilt of knowing I could have easily purchased a cheap self-help book would just be too much for me. But then if I purchased the book I’d feel guilty because I could have checked it out for free from the library. And if I checked it out for free from the library I’d feel guilty because I’d know I could have Googled “guilt therapy” (and gotten About 2,430,000 results--0.18 seconds) and not used the gas I burned to get to the library. That would require even more therapy and … well, that’s why I can’t change my birthday money coffee day.

I’ve been thinking about my upcoming ten weeks of Friday morning birthday money coffee since my birthday way back in October but there just hadn’t been time to start the weekly trips yet. It’s important to me that I enjoy my Friday morning birthday money coffees consecutively. I don’t want a week here and a week there. I am willing to wait until I can buy coffee ten weeks in a row. I need consistency; a coffee rhythm that says to me, “everything is right with the world.”

Early this week I began to harbor hope that my birthday money coffee could begin this Friday. I checked the calendar and saw nothing for the next ten Fridays that would prevent me from purchasing my birthday money coffee in those special paper cups with the plastic lids. I don’t know why, but I love those paper cups with plastic lids. I love the cardboard sleeve specially designed to protect delicate fingers from the heat of the coffee. And I especially love being able to throw that cup and plastic lid away when I’m finished. It’s not that I’m wasteful or trying to intentionally add to the landfill. I’m a recycler. I save plastic and newspaper. I have a little pretend garbage can on my kitchen counter for compost scraps. And I live with Dean. But I’m engulfed in such a feeling of absolute power when I throw that cup away with total abandon. It's intoxicating. Take that, you paper cup!

Finally, yesterday I decided it was time. All day at work as I drank my home-brewed coffee, lukewarm from my thermos, I thought “tomorrow I am going to buy my first Friday morning birthday money coffee.” My excitement continued to build once I got home. “I’m not going to need you tomorrow”, I said to my thermos as I rinsed it out. “Tomorrow I’m buying my Friday morning birthday money coffee in the cup I can throw away with utter abandon.”

This morning I woke up excited and filled with anticipation. And then I heard the wind. It was howling. I knew I would have to walk across the office parking lot in 40 mph winds clutching my precious Friday morning birthday money coffee. But I wasn’t worried. I had a plan this year. A “how to get my steaming coffee across a windy parking lot and into my cubicle without spilling a drop” plan. I will share my plan with all of you, just in case you may find need of it in the future.

The Friday Morning Birthday Money

Coffee For Windy Days Plan

Attire:

• Wear earrings with secure clasps. This is not a dangly earring day. I nearly had a dangly earring blown out of my ear once while walking across the parking lot in the wind. Risking spilling your birthday money coffee while chasing an earring across a parking lot is an unnecessary and preventable risk.

• Pull your hair back and tie it at your neck. Being blinded by blowing hair, causing you to walk into the side mirror of one of the huge pickup trucks parked in the lot, spilling your birthday money coffee all over yourself is, again, a preventable and unnecessary risk.

• Wear pants. There may not be anyone else in the parking lot at that ungodly early hour but a woman’s first reaction when her skirt blows up over her head is to grab for it. And if she is holding a cup of hot coffee, … well, I don’t want to go there. Again, a preventable risk.

• Wear solid shoes with low heels. I don’t believe this needs any further explanation.

• If possible, fill your pockets with rocks. (This is where being married to a geologist can, for once, come in handy). Flying through the air may sound like a thrill, but the folks below you who will be pelted with droplets of hot coffee will not appreciate it. Another alternative is to eat a lot of pumpkin pie, completely covered in whipped cream, like I did. The added weight will hopefully keep you grounded, but if you should still find yourself floating like Mary Poppins, the subsequent landing will be softer due to your increased soft, fatty tissue.

Parking Lot Protocol:

• Place your coffee securely in your right hand.

• Push open your car door with your left shoulder and old it open with your left foot. Do not let the door close no matter how strong the wind is.

• In one smooth move, slide out of the car, covering the special coffee-sipping opening on the top of the cup with the first finger of your left hand (even if it leaves a brown spot on the new alpaca gloves you bought in Ecuador). Step aside quickly, letting the wind slam your door shut.

• Tightly hold your Friday morning birthday money coffee in your right hand, still pressing the first finger of your left hand onto the coffee-sipping hole on the top of the cup. Lower your head, lean into the wind, and stagger as fast as you can to the office door. Do not release your finger from the coffee-sipping opening on the top of the cup no matter how much your finger is burning. If you raise your finger, even for a second, the wind will blow that coffee out of the opening, straight into your eyes, blinding you. This may very well cause you to trip over the parking lot curb, onto the sidewalk, where your sprawled body will then be whipped and rolled, over and over, until you are tangled in the snow fence where no one will hear your cries or see your battered and beaten body.

This morning I followed that plan exactly. It went like clockwork until I was halfway across the parking lot and realized that my coffee was still bubbling up out of the lid. How could that be? The lid was on tight. I was holding my finger tightly on the special coffee-sipping hole on the top of the cup. Did I have a damaged lid? How could my plan be defective?

Once I got my Friday morning cup of birthday money coffee safely in my cubie and took a closer look I realized there was a flaw in my plan. There is a tiny, tiny pinhole in the lid across from the larger special coffee-sipping opening. A pinhole large enough to allow coffee to bubble and erupt on a windy day.  Can I cover both the coffee-sipping opening and the tiny pinhole while walking across a parking lot fighting hurricane-force winds? Can I do that and stay upright until I reach the safety of the door? I don’t know.  I feel I must develop a revised plan. A plan that I fear involves physics and math and some kind of complicated aerodynamics formula. And I need to come up with it before next Friday because what if it’s another windy Friday morning birthday money coffee day? I can’t just wait until a day when it’s not windy. I can’t change the day. I already told you why.

If I can’t come up with an adequate revision to my plan I might have to come up with an alternative course of action. Right now there is only one alternative I can imagine. I need to find a Friday morning birthday money coffee delivery service.

Where IS Dean?◦

I Knew There Was A Reason I Kept Him

Wallowing―It’s Not Just For Pigs

As you may or may not be aware (and if you aren’t, you must have been living deep in a swamp in the rainforest of Ecuador) I am the Duchess, the Baroness, and the Princess of all things guilt. And if that guilt is even remotely related to my role as mother, I am the all-time Ultimate Queen Of Guilt. I also tend to be a bit of a helicopter mom/wife/daughter/tour director (take your pick). Actually, if I’m being totally honest, I have an obsessive need to be in control of most e • v • e • r • y thing. Yeah, yeah….go ahead. Shake your head slowly and say it ….“poor, poor Dean”.

Since my cryptic post about the wedding, I haven’t written anything else because I have been busy wallowing in mother guilt. I have been tormenting myself with “what if I would have” and “I should have” and “dang it, why didn’t I!?” Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and even though I sorta-kinda know in my head that there wasn’t much I could have done at the time, I still believe in my heart I should have been able to take control and make Abby and Jorge’s wedding ceremony perfect. Me. I should have been that person who thinks quickly on their feet. That person who realizes immediately something’s not right, springs into action and fixes everything before anybody else realizes there’s a problem. But I wasn’t. And I didn’t. Six days after the wedding, as I was (still) whining about my failure to “fix it” to my sister, she looked me in the eye, took a breath and said, in that special way only a loving sister can, “Cathy. Abby is fine. Get over it!”

It is now 18 days past the wedding and I’ve finally decided it’s time to take her advice. It’s time to move on and focus on the other parts of the wedding that WERE awesome and fun and perfect. Such as “Ryan aka MacGyver Comes to the Rescue”. Who says you need a special button hook specifically designed for the tiny covered buttons on a wedding dress? ... or ... “How To Drink Whiskey While Salsa Dancing Without Spilling (much) On Your Partner.” And we’re not talking small shot glasses here. We’re talkin’ tumblers.  ... or ... “Adventures in the Beauty Salon.” I’ll bet you didn’t know that asking in Spanish for a “simple and elegant” hairstyle translates to “a hairstyle coated with so much lacquer you can bounce a bowling ball off your head and not feel it.”

I hope to soon regale you with stories and photos of all of our adventures and I promise that from now on, all my guilt and obsessing will be kept completely in my head—anything wedding related anyway. I make no promises about any future events I am unable to control.

You didn’t really think I’d transformed myself from a guilt-ridden control freak to a relatively “normal” person that quickly did you?◦

Wallowing―It’s Not Just For Pigs

Cost/Benefit Analysis ―Or ―How Much Guilt is Enough?

I had to mow the lawn today. I had already put it off longer than I should have but I knew, next weekend, mowing wasn’t going to figure into my plan of freaking out as I pack for our trip to Ecuador. So, because thirteen days from today I will be in a strapless gown, even though the temperature called for a tank top and shorts, I donned clothing appropriate for a cool and cloudy day, slathered sunscreen on the few bits of skin still peeking out, plugged in the mower, and sweat like I was in a hot yoga class.

Partway through mowing, I took a short break and did a little pruning. Over the summer the bush next to our mailbox did what bushes do. It grew. Recently it had been getting harder to find the mailbox, let alone close it without a pine branch getting mashed in the mailbox door. I did a mental cost/benefit analysis and determined that the benefits of being able to open and close the mailbox without fighting through the bush were greater than the 99% possibility Dean would be mad at me for an hour or so after he discovered what I’d done. He has been busy putting the garden to bed and I knew he wasn’t going to want to deal with the composting of those branches.

In our house, there is always the issue of compost — or to be more specific, the pre-composting chipping and shredding. I knew this would be the cost to the benefit. I knew when he saw a wheel barrow piled high with pine branches he would not be happy. Chipping and shredding was not on his list of things to do this weekend ― even though he goes into a zen-like state of tranquility when he’s doing it. Because we have a “baby” chipper, said chipping and shredding must be done while the branches are green and soft. So I knew the cost of my benefit was going to be immediate.

Dean was inside making spaghetti sauce from the garden tomatoes while I was mowing and pruning. I came inside just as he was getting ready to head outside. I had a mini debate with myself. “Tell him about the pile of branches before he discovers it himself, or let him be surprised and pay the price later.” I went for the surprise factor and hoped it would be much later. 15 seconds later he was stomping through the house to the garage mumbling to himself. Something about women and shredding. I offered him a solution. “Just throw them away. Just this one time.”  But no. That is not an option in this house. Not yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

Dean stomping through the house mumbling was a cost I could live with. What I hadn’t factored into my formula was the guilt, which amazes even me because I am the Queen, the Empress, and the Goddess of Guilt. The guilt I felt from knowing that he was out in the backyard chipping and shredding branches I had created, when he really wanted to be putting his garden to bed, was too much for me. To rid myself of the guilt I would have to make amends. I offered to work in the garden. “Really? You’re serious?” he said. I nodded and held my breath … hoping it wouldn’t be “turn over the dirt in the beds … by hand … with a garden fork.”

But I got lucky. All I had to do was harvest the rest of the beans ― even though our bean crop was inedible this year. I don’t know why, but they were stringy. And I don’t mean stringy as in string beans. It felt like your mouth was full of dental floss when you were finished chewing them. But there is no way Dean would throw perfectly good but inedible beans into the compost. And if somebody else will sit in the hot sun and pick them ― so much the better. I didn’t dare suggest we throw them away, but personally, I think they might enjoy being with the other members of the vegetable variety in the compost.

So ultimately the cost/benefit breakout looked like this:

Cost: Dean grumbled.  I sat in dirt, sweating in the blazing sun picking beans.

Shadow got filthy from flying chipping/shredding bits.

Benefit: A bush won't attack me each time I open the mailbox. Shadow will get to eat stringy beans. I didn’t have to turn over the dirt with a pitchfork. Dean gave Shadow a bath.

I think it’s clear the benefits outweighed the cost.

The nasty, stringy, inedible beans are waiting to be sorted, cooked and shelled. I could help with that … but you know what? I’m not feeling that guilty.

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Cost/Benefit Analysis ―Or ―How Much Guilt is Enough?