WHAT SHALL WE DO TODAY …

A normal summer day around here starts at 5:00 am.  There was a time in my life when I considered this to be still the middle of the night – I mean, who in their right mind would get up at such a ridiculous hour?  My mother would smile and tell me that “it was the most wonderful time of the day.”  As a mother of seven children, she knew where to find peace and tranquility.  We had a small dairy farm; she got up early every morning and went to bring the cows in for milking.  I was in my teens and thought of this as drudgery, she was much wiser and recognised it as a gift.

There are no cows to go fetch in my life but I do enjoy sitting on the deck, sipping my coffee and watching the cattle grazing across the road.  There are mourning doves coo-cooing in the evergreens, hummingbirds buzzing past me on their way to the feeder, robins and brown thrashers picking worms out the lawn for their breakfasts, and red-winged blackbirds singing their morning song from the cat tails across the road.  Reassurance that all is well with the world.

A day that starts as early as 5:00 has a lot of potential but in the heat we’ve been experiencing lately a girl needs a plan to survive the day. 

The first order on my daily agenda is to get up and close all the windows.  This is called ‘shutting the cool in’ and is even more important than #2 – hitting ‘go’ on the coffee machine.  Then there is breakfast and getting the man out the door with his lunch on whatever mission he has for the day thus leaving me free to sit on the deck, bird watch, and plan my day.

Remember the cartoon series Pinky and the Brain from the mid 1990s?  Remember how Pinky would ask the Brain every episode “What are we going to do tonight, Brain?” to which Brain inevitably replied “We are going to take over the world.”  Well, except for the names and a few other changes, that is what goes through my mind at 6:00 every morning.  How best to tackle my day?  What can I get done?  What can I postpone? Is it an outside job kind of day?  When did I last fertilize my deck planters? Do I need to go to town for anything? 

And the one question that is there Every. Single. Day.  What do I make for supper?

I’m pretty sure that taking over the world would be easier than a new meal plan 24/7/365 forever and ever, amen.

All of these quandaries depend on the weather.  Every single one of them.  How hot is it going to be?  And when is the heat going to hit?  On a good day it’s 10:00 before it’s too hot to weed, on a bad day weeding is stroked off the ‘to do’ list before my coffee is cold.  What I choose to wear depends on the temperature and there are days when I change 3 or 4 times to keep up with weather fluctuations and activity levels.  Likewise, the supper menu choices rely on whether I want to turn my oven on, or not.  There’s been a lot of BBQ and salads lately, with a couple of crock pot meals cooked out on the deck table for variety.

I also have to wrestle with practicality.  There can be a whole bunch of things to do that I really don’t care for and some that are among my favorites.  My windows are in extreme need of cleaning but I hate that job.  On the other hand I could do a load or two of laundry – I’m not crazy about the folding and putting away part of that job but the washing is easy and I LOVE hanging it out on the line, and how it smells when it comes back in.  Laundry wins over windows almost every time. 

Likewise the cleaning-the-fridge-out vs. tending flower beds battle.  Mowing the lawn is the biggest temptation of all; I love the smell of fresh cut grass and how easy my zero-turn mower makes the job.  Luckily the price of gas holds me back. 

This morning common sense and weeding the vegetable garden won out.  Two hours of reasonable temperatures and a nice breeze to discourage biting insects and the job was done.  It’s not even noon and I am back on the deck wondering ‘what next?’  And also ‘what’s for supper’?

The thing is, a person has to be careful not to overthink things.  That’s what the Brain used to do.  His plans to take over the world were so detailed and convoluted that they never worked.  Pinky came much closer to success by bumbling along with good fortune almost falling in his lap at times.  I identify with that kind of approach.  I’m going to fix myself some lunch (while ignoring that the fridge still needs to be cleaned out), watch the noon news, and go with whatever the afternoon turns up.

Like maybe a nap.  Narf!