UP TO MY OLD TRICKS

I’m up to my old tricks again. 

Normally I live a lackadaisical kind of existence.  There’s always work to do ... and I get around to most of it in due time.  I admire people who take on spring cleaning and don’t stop till the whole house is clean, top to bottom.  The walls, the ceilings, the closets, the floors and windows, the curtains and all the bedding – I am in awe of such perseverance.  Not only do they get it done in the spring, but in the same spring that they started it in.  Totally out of my league.

I have a sister who does this, proving beyond a doubt that this tendency is not genetic.

Me?  I do get around to cleaning, but it’s only on a piecemeal basis.  It doesn’t happen because it’s spring or has any other arbitrary date or set launch criteria.  My modus operandi is to take a scrub cloth to a dirty light switch plate, realize that makes the wall look dirty so I wash that too, which shows how dirty the ceiling is.  Before you know it I’ve painted the main part of the house and ordered new curtains for the living room. 

Well, that’s an exaggeration.  That all takes a week or two but you get the picture – random start point, hap hazard method, at least three days of “What was I thinking?” and then the finished product ... not to be touched again for another five years.  If that.

Otherwise, my only other house cleaning motivation is being given a deadline.  I perform well under pressure.  I can get stuff done when I know there is an end date to aim for.  Like company.  I have company coming.

This means there is a lot to do in a short time.  It calls for my secret weapon: THE TO DO LIST.

This is where the tricky part comes in.  Out comes the pen and paper and I catalogue all the things that need to be done before I let guests into my version of domestic bliss.  There are all the regulars: wash the floors, make the beds up fresh, dust the furniture, do a little baking.  These are the things that have to be done.

But, because I have a deadline and I know that pressure helps me get things done I also add things like ‘wash the windows’ and ‘sweep the cobwebs off the deck’.  You know, things that need to be done anyway so let’s squeeze them in.

By this time I’m feeling very accomplished and add a flourish of pie-in-the-sky items ... ‘weed the vegetable garden’ and ‘clean the garage’.  I mean, get serious!  That ain’t never going to happen in the next month, let alone ten days.

So I talk myself down and write down more reasonable and useful demands on my time ... ‘clean out the fridge’ and ‘de-lime the shower’.  And start in on the work at hand.

The trouble is that these jobs are slow going, and my sense of integrity won’t allow me to cross them off the list until they are COMPLETELY done.  Meanwhile there are other things that are getting done all along, but they’re not on the list.  By mid day, needing a sense of accomplishment, I add things like ‘hang clothes on the line’ and ‘dig potatoes for supper’ to my list just so I can stroke them off as done.  It’s a form of legitimate cheating, and as old as the hills.  A loophole, if you will.

So far today I have been able to cross off three jobs – two actual worthwhile tasks and one tacky add-on ‘go for groceries and water’ that doesn’t count for anything because I would have to do it anyway.  The bonus is that I’m not done yet.  Writing this blog is a genuine, bona fide item on my list and I am now finished it.  *stroke*

Better yet, when I’m done obliterating that one off my list it will be cool enough to go out and tackle the spider’s webs on the deck. 

Baby, I’m on a role!

 

                                                SEASON OF COMPLETION

                                                      

       Take a deep breath, and hold it.  Push yourself a little.  This isn’t a contest or a test but when your chest starts to feel tight and uncomfortable make yourself go another five seconds, then let it all go in a big easy sigh.  Breathe out, and relax. 

       Maybe you feel a little dizzy but the physiological effect this has on your body is pleasant, you will likely feel a slightly heightened sense of awareness.  Sounds are crisper, colours are brighter, the air in your next breath is more refreshing.  On some obscure scale of measurement your life is somehow richer.

       This is the effect that autumn has on me. 

       Spring gets a lot of attention.  We can’t wait to see the winter gone.  The snow that looked so white and pure when it first fell is dirty and unwelcome by the time of spring equinox.  We want it gone, and replaced with colour.  We want green grass and green trees.  And when that isn’t enough we want flowers of every hue.  We want to see life and growth.  We find ourselves standing at the edge of our gardens waiting for the first radishes and lettuce.  As pleasant as spring is though, it doesn’t last long; summer comes along and pushes us forward.

       The sun worshipers appear in July.  No temperature is too high for them, no day too hot, no sky too dazzling.  It is a season of extremes; Mother Nature has her biggest and best hissy fits now, stirring heat and humidity into ferocious storms and spilling these tantrums of hers across the prairies, leaving us to scramble for shelter and pick up the pieces when she’s done.  She is a talented artist and our summer sky is her palette; night or day she shows us what she is made of, and I admit I am impressed with the work she does during her “summer period”, but it’s not her best work.

       The sheer force of July leaves me worn out.  I find myself hiding out in my house, not wanting to feel the bite of that glaring sun on my skin.  The days roll on, the wild flowers transition from pretty pink roses at the edge of the road to the thistles and goldenrod of late summer, waving from the ditches.  Heat shimmers up in waves from the earth’s surface and dust devils do their dizzy dance during late August afternoons. 

       Then one morning the world feels different and you realize that Mother Nature has slipped into something more comfortable.  The countryside gives a great sigh of relief: and somehow the sounds are a little crisper, the colours more vibrant, the air you breathe, perfumed with the scent of ripe apples, is exquisite.  Welcome to the season of completion. 

       The year is wrapping up its production: fields of grain ripen before our eyes, gardeners are doing their best to stay ahead of ripening tomatoes and cucumbers, and this spring’s baby calves are almost as big as their mothers.  Juvenile hummingbirds have joined rival gangs and are waging noisy battles over ownership of the feeders.  At the moment sugar water is disappearing at an alarming rate but it won’t be long and they will be gone.  The geese will wait a few more weeks and then follow the tiny warriors south.

      School buses will come out of hiding, adding their bright orange to the festive fall display.  Harvest machinery is already venturing out, searching for fields that are ready to go. It won’t be long before harvest fills the air with dust; grain dust from the combines and road dust from the trucks hauling grain.  Sometimes the dust just hangs in mid air creating the magical illusion of monster-sized machinery hovering weightlessly over unseen ground.  Crickets add their background music.

       Brilliantly coloured leaves will scatter across green lawns like so many pieces of gold, and the very air is saturated with ripeness.  The sharp scent of frost-nipped plant life will fill our senses and hold promise of nutrients for next year’s flowers.  The sun goes down earlier every night.

       One by one lids will slam down over grain bins full of the year’s bounty.  Pickles made now will be ready to serve for Thanksgiving dinner.  We will wonder again how so much time could have slipped past on us, another autumn has come and gone. 

       It’s time for a few more sighs:  one of relief because all the hard work of the growing season is done, and another one of regret because it will be three quarters of a year before autumn comes to us once more.  And, although there is no way to prove it, having experienced autumn one more time, our lives are somehow richer than they were before.

FROM THE KETTLE TO THE FIRE

 

Being as I am married to a farmer the concept of holiday long weekends is meaningless to me.  On the May long weekend ‘we’ are seeding.  On the July long weekend ‘we’ are spraying or haying.  On the August long weekend ‘we’ are baling or preparing for harvest – which is something that can wipe out both Labour Day and Thanksgiving depending on the weather Mother Nature hands out.

 

In my next life I hope to find a husband who understands the concept of “holidays”.  Wish me luck.

 

Meanwhile though, in my present life, I am with a farmer.   And we have a large garden.  I planted it on the May long weekend and have been weeding it ever since.  For the past three weeks I have also been picking berries and either freezing them or making jam.  Now I have peas and beans to deal with I have made the executive decision to gift the rest of the berries to the birds.  The corn, zucchini and spaghetti squash are looming on the horizon, thank goodness the carrots, beets, and potatoes are root vegetables and can wait.  Ain’t nobody got time for them this time of the year.

 

As my brain roused itself out of sleep this morning I began the usual circuit of pending jobs on my ‘to do’ list.  I was on my own for the day because the farmer had one more field to swath ... what should I do with it?  It was about this time that it occurred to me that this was one of those holiday Mondays and maybe I should go a little crazy and do something new and exciting.

 

Something outside the box, at least.

 

Speaking of boxes ... there was that one job.  I suppressed a shudder.  Apparently I am capable of spoiling a holiday all on my own. 

 

There’s this one room in my house – the one I’m sitting in right now, as a matter of fact – that needs serious intervention.  The most obvious problem is the filthy, rundown carpet.  It has to go.  It was the wrong thing to put in an office anyway.  What it needs is laminate flooring.  I even have a son-in-law who is just itching to do the job, but as much as I would love new flooring I dread what that means.  This room is also home to filing cabinets and desks and cupboards, all near to exploding with papers that need to be sorted, then saved or destroyed; a painfully slow process that I have been putting off for years.  It seems that I excel at storing things in a filing cabinet (Not well, or organized in any recognizable fashion, you understand ... just in a file, in a drawer, in the cabinet), but I really suck at weeding anything back out of it. 

 

My dream of new flooring hinged on being able to move the furniture, though.  I heaved a huge sigh of resignation and flipped back the blankets.  I sure do know how to par-tay!

 

I have to say that once I got going on my project it became more fun.  At the bottom of one drawer I found our very first passports – printed so that we could take a cruise for our honeymoon.  We look like such kids!  I also have a file in each of the kids’ names – some legal papers, some tax returns, and in the #1 son’s file is the full and complete correspondence I received from him while he was out of the country for 13 months when he was 19: five letters, less than a page long.  They should really be in a safe deposit box; they are that rare and precious.

 

I came across our marriage certificate ... that would have been handy a couple months ago when I was applying for my pension ... and other artifacts from the past:  bills of sale for various machinery we have owned, registration papers for bulls long dead, mineral rights lease agreements from companies that don’t exist anymore.  But the bulk of my mission was to fill a cardboard box with ancient NISA papers, folders of expired legal correspondence, and owner’s manuals for household appliances long relegated to a dump somewhere – like, back when dumps were still a thing.

 

Eight hours later there was a new, small patch of my grungy carpet showing.  I had made some headway on this fun holiday I had been on.  Also, I had a huge box of the kind of papers that can’t be thrown in the garbage; they have too much personal information on them to go anywhere but a burning barrel.

 

So that will be my next job.  I’ve gone from boiling water to blanche vegetables yesterday to feeding a paper fire tomorrow.  And then right back into the next round of pea picking.  I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think this is how holiday Mondays are supposed to go.