. Spinning .

Just finished a few hours of hard labor organizing the cellar.  What makes that exhaustion from physical effort feel so good? 

Mental exertion from watching a documentary on tsunami on the Discovery channel.  La Palma, in the Canary Islands; an island made up of two volcanos.  Severe eruptions could cause a tsunami that could reach the U.S. east coast and wipe out twelve miles inland from New York to Miami.

This mental effort to envision this event doesn’t feel so good. 

I have been a housewife, live-in lover, seamstress, decorator.  I am a cook, stewer, baker, little winemaker.  I have been an executive secretary to presidents, a customer service rep; have worked in production control, advertising, inside and outside sales.  I have been a cocktail waitress, an assembly worker, an EMT. An archer, I’ve edited and published a magazine, worked leather, wood into tackle.  I am a tree-pruner, gardener, mover of soil, canner of peaches, pickles, applesauce, grapejuice and salsa maker.  I have embroidered, knitted, macramed, crocheted and quilted.  I am a picture framer, student, wife and business owner.

When all I ever really wanted to be is a writer.

Jim and I sat side by side this morning, our computer desks in tandem, our attentions on our separate screens.

"What books were you looking for?" he asks me, and I give him names of several that I’ve already ordered.

It seems he’s found a website where he has found several collector’s items of his own, and while the newer titles that I’ve given him prove to be more expensive than what I’ve paid at Amazon, there are some others that we own we check for values.

The first four, old first edition archery-related, are worth well over a thousand dollars alone.  And for once I’m glad that someone–unlike me–would write his name within a book.

Now maybe he’ll agree to build that bookcase I’ve been wanting, one with glass doors to keep out dust, and one that saves and savors the value of a book.

Funny how sometimes an executive decision such as yesterday’s to finish cleaning off the driveway in foresight of a storm, and despite the fact it was a wrong one (the driveway is a sheet of ice) it still leads back to memories warm enough to melt the ice if memories had substance.

January 9th, 1999, 9:00 a.m.:  A phone call while I’m in the shower starts off a day that ends with the death of a much loved neighbor.  A heart attack, I rush next door and desperately blow life and pound his heart to make it work again, until the ambulance arrives and I look up to see my husband crying in their kitchen.  His wife and I go with the state trooper behind the racing ambulance; and in my heart I know I’ve done no good.  I’d heard Andy chipping ice away all morning in his driveway, and once I heard his truck pull into ours. 

Within an hour in the ER we know he’s gone.  And we survivors stare at each other in disbelief.  I make the phone calls to his daughter and his sister and his son, and then I go to see him one last time to say I tried.

We don’t get home till after noon, and when I finally make the treacherous walk across the hard icy shell of our lawns, I stop outside our own garage doors and start to cry.  A bucket of sand is sitting there that Andy left us just before he’d gone inside to die.

And Andy wouldn’t have wanted this, but two weeks and another ice storm later at his service, two hundred people moving in slow baby steps up the pure gleam of icy parking lots to reach the church just to say goodbye.

A mixture of emotion on this day, thoughts hyperlinked to memories spanning years. 

But I need a few more moments just to savor them, and in a little while, I’ll share.

It’s just after 6:30 p.m. and we had a chicken stir-fry (hate to tell you, but the best stir fry comes from cleaning out the fridge, and the chicken was salvaged out of a soup my husband made that was, well, not really edible as is.  He left the whole chicken in too long until it fell apart in shreds and those little bones were interspersed throughout) and fried Chinese noodles that I made with hot oil, celery seed, a dash of soy, ground ginger, garlic and dried mustard.  It was excellent, but thinking ahead two weeks, I can’t see me sitting in a classroom two nights a week from 6:30 until 9:30 and staying awake after a full meal.

In other household news (no, I’m not turning into one of those daily life report blogs, just today), the man came home and fixed the post on the mailbox which I couldn’t do–I just fixed the top part.  He then proceeded to tell me what was structurally wrong with it.

Now in this town, mailboxes do not have an easy life.  If they survive the winter snowplows, they usually get creamed by high-flying cars on our lovely curves, or backed into pulling out of driveways.  There are no expensive mailboxes in Burlington.  Someone once tried one of those hundred-dollar hard plastic enclosed thingies and we all just drove by regularly to see if it would stand up to the stress, doubting it would be the answer to our prayers.  It didn’t make it into the first snowfall.  Our town may be the only one that keeps a supply of mailboxes in stock for the newer residents who haven’t settled in enough yet and call Town Hall to complain.  Our mailbox once finished out a winter duct-taped to the post and the neighbor’s box.  Another neighbor keeps a spare mailbox mounted on a pole and embedded in a bucket of cement on wheels to replace one that’s beyond repairing–meaning, you can’t find all the parts somewhere down the road.

So please, if you happen to come by our way, don’t look down on our beaten up mail receptacles, don’t snicker at our contrived plywood protective barriers; just know that after living in Burlington through your first winter, you learn to adjust, and we’re a frugal folk, but friendly too.

Just spent three hours cleaning the driveway–chopping the ice that developed due to a corporate decision we made as a team to let the last two inches of snow remain as a barrier for the sleet that formed a shell on top, and thus allowing us to still get it with the snowblower.  Better than freezing rain and sleet turning a clean driveway into a sheet of ice.  Once again, we were wrong.

Odd though, that I enjoyed this physical exertion although I do admit to being pretty worn out now from flinging shovelfuls of snow mixed with sand that weighed in at about twenty to twenty-five pounds.  Also fixed the mailbox one more time as it was hanging from a snowplow hit sometime during the night.  This mailbox, missing its door and cracked along one side will be retired with full honors this year–it’s actually lasted three winters in its battle with the town crew. 

Odder still, I did this with an injured knee and yet when I got in the car to run an errand uptown, I had a hard  time driving because I couldn’t bend my knee.  But I’m built of sturdy stock despite my five-foot, 100-pound self.  Meanwhile, my neighbor (who weighs in at about 350)  called me one last time this morning after eight calls yesterday complaining about her driveway not being done–it’s a long story, but I have little sympathy, especially since the plow people are the family that just lost the husband and father of five kids.  (we did her driveway the first year after her husband died, but our snowthrower doesn’t work on a gravel driveway.)  But she was suffering from cabin fever after a day of being housebound; me, I love it.

Good thing I like to write early in the morning, while the snow is still fairly fresh and clean and white.  Otherwise, my poetic words might not come out quite as pretty.

I used to believe that our little plot of land here in our section of the state was naturally sandy and loaded with rocks, and while much of it had been farmland, most of the topsoil had also been scraped off and sold.  So I performed my semi-annual Miracle of the Soil (I can do that ’cause I’m Catholic) and introduced about five hundred pounds of peat moss and some lime into it on a regular (well, semi-annual I guess) basis. 

But after living here almost fifteen years of winters I have solved a mystery I didn’t know was lurking underneath this quiet little town; sand is not natural to the area, but is the result of years of overly enthusiastic town crew snowplows who spend the first snow day constantly spreading it on the roads, and the second day plowing it off and spraying it ten feet onto front lawns.   From there it migrates to the rest of the yard and eventually, the land rises, the trees do their damnedest to grown tall as fast as they can or smother, and people just eventually add yet another story on their homes. 

I always wonder why, in our little ranch, the cellar goes down three levels…

It’s often that I shut my eyes to see the morning darkness wake in sounds like slushing cars going by, and I know the snow has melted.  I see the dripping drops form into icicles that hang from drainpipes by metallic plops of water in constant rhythm.  I’ll sip at coffee that is creamy tan told by its taste of milky smoothness in the roundness of the cup. 

I’ll breakfast from the cupboard where uneaten dreams are kept.  And disappointed by the light, I’ll see the day.

(Addendum:  Not for nuttin’, but those ten words have got to be the best I’ve ever strung together:  "I’ll breakfast from the cupboard where uneaten dreams are kept." Maybe I’ll even throw them up permanently on the site somewhere.)

Contrary to Ronni’s feelings that we choose to slow down as we get wiser and older, I find myself having developed a sense of urgency about a lot of things.

At the same time as I’ve mellowed about dust and grocery lines, I have become impatient for things that interest me to come about, seek quick learning and comprehension of new things I’ve discovered, and am generally less tolerant of the "I’m okay, you’re okay" lackadaisical attitude of the general mob around me. 

I’m not sure if it’s because of getting older or because of the different way the older generations were raised, it just seems that I expect to do things on time and in the best possible manner, and fully accept guilt for not getting a job done.  Once had an argument with someone who in fact was not much younger than myself about guilt.  He felt that guilt was a bad thing and should have no place in our lives.

Huh?

Guilt is what motivates us to keep promises if the joy in the keeping isn’t there.  Guilt is what makes us feel badly when we’ve wronged someone.  To me, without understanding and being open to a sense of guilt, we have no consideration or values for others and their property.  Witness the thieves and murderers, gangs that terrorize others simply because they don’t have a regard for anyone, not even themselves, and notice the astonishing rise in lack of remorse.

I would love to never feel guilty again.  But to me, that also means that I would never wrong anyone again as well.  Yes, this is the best way to eliminate guilt.

Going back to the sense of time, I just hope to accomplish what I’m meant to do, whatever else I can reach for and beyond, and be smart enough to recognize and assign priorities.