Archive for the ‘Misc. Griping’ Category

I blame it on the snowstorm. There’s nothing like sixteen inches of thick white snow falling in the space of twenty-four hours to make everyone and everything slow down.

There’s suddenly an insulating factor involved in every action. Walking, driving, shoveling, there’s this compressed “hmph” that absorbs and replaces the normal sounds. And, of course, the scenery is just prettier.

Maybe that’s why I started to intentionally listen to Christmas music on the radio and start singing it as I work around the house. Normally, I have to be drug into the holiday season kicking and screaming (sometimes literally). But I put up the tree last night. I dug out a few ornaments. I began working in my head where everything is going to be laid out when the family comes over for Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong. My calendar is full, very full. Just looking at it can be overwhelming. I still have three jobs. There’s still painting to do and stuff to clean up and sort and put away. I have no idea what I’m cooking for people to eat. It was decided we were going to do the $5 elephant gifts this year, and I haven’t done any shopping, period.

Oh yeah, and then there’s that whole book thing…you know, the reason this blog even exists. I have a reading in Webster on Saturday. I’m also trying to get a Facebook fan page up and running with interesting content to drive people to it. I’m compiling lists of mystery book clubs in and out of the area to contact. All the while, book 4 travels in and out of my consciousness with possible plot twists and emotional conundrums for the characters to overcome.

Yet, here I sit, not nearly as frazzled as usual. I’m somehow content to work through my exhaustive schedule one task at a time. I’m feeling a capacity to forgive myself for not having everything perfectly planned and timed.

Maybe that’s my present this year, not to make mountains out of molehills. Even if this feeling only lasts for the day, I’ll take it. I’ll actually notice the scenery out my truck window as I drive between errands. I’ll appreciate the way it looks like Bedford Falls puked all over everything.

Merry Christmas.

As I have mentioned numerous times, I am both lazy and guilt-ridden. This pretty much means that I only accomplish tasks pertaining to housework when people other than my husband are going to witness my tolerance for filth, and I am shamed into doing something about it. That scenario is now upon me.

Here’s some background. We bought our gigantic house in January of this year. By normal people’s standards, it’s probably average, by mcmansion standards, a bit small. Regardless, two people in a five bedroom-2bath house seems extravagant to me. We haven’t lived in this much space since we left the Cities, and that includes a laundry room.

Yes, after years of shlepping piles of dirty clothes and rolls of quarters back and forth to the laundromat every week or so, the idea of my very own washer and dryer in a designated space, where I could tend to our skivvies in absolute privacy, seemed downright decadent. Not so fast.

Being that we got our house at a bank-owned bargain, I was armed with lowered expectations about the appliances left behind. We were pleasantly surprised that the furnace and hot-water heater were working perfectly. Once I vacuumed the four cups of cat-food out of the washer, it functioned without a problem. The dryer burned up the first time we used it. It sits out in the garage in a corner where crap gets piled on top of it.

So, for a while, I hung clothes on my Ikea clothes rack (the best thing I ever bought from Ikea, so of course they don’t make it anymore). It worked fine for some stuff, but everything had a film of lint, and bath towels dried into scratchy sheets of plywood. No one needs that much exfoliating.

I eventually gave into the shlepping. The laundromat’s two doors down from my husband’s shop, so about a block and a half away. Not a horrible jaunt, but I reminded him that it wasn’t going to fly when winter came and the streets turned icy.

We stumbled upon a gorgeous dryer in a neighbor’s driveway when we were out garage sale-ing this last summer. It was only a year old and we got a great deal on it. The only problem? It’s a gas drier. There’s no gas line in the laundry room.

So, after months of nagging, and with the weather turning cold (not sure which one did the trick), I was informed last night that our designated handyman will come put the gas lines in…tomorrow.

That means tonight I have to clean like a mad woman. Not only does the laundry room need to be cleared out and washed, and some sheetrock  and the old dryer vent removed, but the basement also has to be scrubbed clean. I also have to clean the rest of the downstairs…you know, on the off chance the handyman has to pee. I need to make our house look like it’s occupied by civilized human beings, instead of the dirty animals with marginal social skills that we really are.

That’s all right. It needs to be done anyway. I’m having family over for Christmas, so the cleaning was a foregone conclusion. I was just hoping to procrastinate a tiny bit longer. At least I’ll be able to dry my clothes at home while I’m cleaning. Don’t tell the other appliances. They might think I’m getting off easy and break down out of spite.

Every region has them. They are cultural touchstones that  happen around the same time every year and have no religious, scientific or civic relevance attached to them. If you are writing a regional-centric book (or series) you better know them by heart.

Here in the good old heartland of the upper Mississippi River Valley, we have several. Spring beckons Construction Season, Garage Sale Season, Fishing Opener, Cabin Season, and Gardening and planting time. Since our actual spring is so God-awfull short here, all of these seasons persist through the (usually) hot summer and into our equally truncated fall. Fall is the breather to get the harvest in and hit the last of the small town festivals (the ones that don’t celebrate cold and snow). Tourists and locals alike drive aimlessly along the back roads, oohing and ahhing at the pretty leaves.

Then, usually around Halloween, it gets cold. Temperature changes are almost never gradual here. We can easily have 40 degree differences in a matter of a few hours. When winter starts marching in, new seasons start.

First there’s Deer Season (technically it’s Hunting Rifle Deer Season, not to be confused with Bow Hunting Deer Season) in early to mid November. For nine days, blaze orange folks of all shapes, sizes, ages (over 12), genders, races, and political affiliates march through woods and fields looking for that bouncing white tail. It’s a time when those who don’t hunt know to pretty much stay indoors for the duration.

Deer Season trumps Thanksgiving, Football, and Black Friday in Wisconsin. Large brown carcasses hanging off of car roofs and out of truck boxes are a badge of respect and honor. A buck with a huge rack of antlers is especially impressive, despite the fact that the meat on it is so old and tough it’s relegated to stews and hamburger. “What’d ya get?”, “An eight-pointer.”, “Nice!”, “Yah.” That conversation will be repeated several thousand times during Deer Season.

After Deer Season, if there’s enough snow, you get Snowmobile Season. After Christmas, when the scientific winter is underway, Ice Fishing Season will start. For those of you in far off tropical realms, like New Zealand or San Diego, ice fishing is the act of sitting on a frozen lake, cutting a hole in the ice, and fishing. It’s like regular fishing without a boat. Most lakes up here will form a crust of ice around 3 feet thick. It’s thick enough to eventually drive a full size truck on and actually leave a small structure called a fish house behind for months at a time. If there’s not sufficient snow on the ground, people will snowmobile on the ice.

The coming of spring here is not heralded so much by flower buds and migrating birds as it is by the removal of the fish houses from the ice. That’s mid March. It can be 60 degrees or 10 degrees outside. The ground, which will be frozen at least 3 feet down, may or may not begin to thaw and expand from the release of frozen water, a phenomena called “the frost heaving.”Then the cycles of cultural seasons start all over again.

Cultural seasons, like the people who mark them, are steadfast and consistent. They persist through temperamental weather  patterns, shifting political climates, even disasters and wars. They mold who we are and where we come from. And they align us as a region like nothing else can. What are your cultural seasons? How do they affect you?