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.