Gardening for the soul

I worked in my garden tonight until the darkness of the sky met the black soil beneath my feet. My husband and I were digging out the Bermuda grass that had jumped from the yard into the garden and has prospered there year after year. It’s the most stubborn grass to have when you don’t want it around. Digging it up only breaks off portions of the roots, which remain buried in the soil and regenerate like science projects gone awry. We could spend hours chopping, raking, sifting, and tossing out chunks of roots, only to miss one tiny piece and find it happily sprouting from the soil days later. It’s Devil Grass- evil to the core!

It rained earlier this afternoon, so where we’d dug up the Devil Grass and turned up the earth, the thick clay soil stuck like peanut butter to the soles of our shoes. Like a fool, I wore flip-flops instead of my gardening shoes, which allowed balls of dirt to work their way under my toes while I tromped through the garden. When I rinsed off my flip-flops, the dirt turned to mud- but looked like poop squished between my toes. I’ll have to wash my feet before I go to bed, just like when I was a kid. Ah… the joys of summer, truly my favorite season of them all.

What I like best about gardening is the time it gives me to just think. My thoughts just get up and walk around in my head, talk to one another, share ideas. I ruminate about everything from work to my mother, which all give me plenty to think about these days. I don’t mind being outside in our humid weather and for some reason this summer, the mosquitoes aren’t as bad as usual, despite all the rain we’ve had. I just wish it would stay daylight a little longer, maybe like the Alaskan summer, where the sun doesn’t set at all. If we had that type of summer here, you’d never get me to wash off my shoes and come inside- but I bet I’d get all of that Devil Grass out of my garden.

Weather nerds unite!

Last Saturday I finally got the chance to attend a weather spotter training class at my library. I’d been wanting to do this for a long time, as I’ve had a life-long fascination with tornadoes and severe weather. But with the kids’ schedules taking over my schedule for the last 16 years, it’s been tough to squeeze in things that interest me, like the spotter training class. Yet somehow the weather gods decided it was time for me to learn their secrets, so they cleared the kids’ schedules, parted the clouds and on a sunny Saturday morning, allowed me to sit in the front row of the class, eager to learn.

Although I thought I knew a lot about funnel clouds and tornadoes and how they form, I discovered I didn’t know it all. Our instructor, Rick Shanklin, showed us pictures of wall clouds and said this rain-free portion of a thunderstorm is where funnel clouds may form if the clouds are rotating. Then we watched videos of funnel clouds and tornadoes forming– pretty cool! He said many people confuse low-hanging clouds with funnel clouds, but if there is no rotation, there is no funnel cloud. A tornado doesn’t form until the funnel cloud touches the ground, which can sometimes be hard to see until it kicks up debris.

My fascination with tornadoes goes back to my childhood, with my mom’s story about the Palm Sunday tornado on April 11, 1965, in our hometown of Elkhart, IN. I was just a baby when my parents were driving us to my grandparents’ lake cottage for a visit. They noticed a massive black cloud behind them the whole way north into Michigan. That night their trip home took longer than expected because roads were blocked by fallen trees and debris. When they finally got home, local news stations were reporting of a killer F4 tornado that came within a mile of our house while we were gone. It really freaked out my mom when she realized that!

As a child, my tornado obsession manifested itself in my newspaper clippings of tornado pictures. I filled up a scrapbook with these clippings, rather than the ordinary sorts of things young girls might put in a scrapbook (I wonder if my mom still has it somewhere in her house…would love to find it). When I worked in a college library twenty years ago, I bought a two-volume set of books called Significant Tornadoes, 1880-1989 by Thomas Grazulis. They’re filled with brief accounts of tornadoes and, of course, lots of tornado pictures. I still have those books and am thinking of buying his update volumes.

The closest I’ve ever been to a tornado was the one my mom spotted the night I was driving her home from work. We were waiting for a traffic light when she pointed to her right and said a funnel cloud was forming over the house on the corner. When I tried to look at it, she urged me to hurry up and turn left. I made the turn, but it put the tornado behind us. Every time I tried to spot it in my rear view mirror, she repeatedly screamed at me to “Don’t look, just drive!” so we could outrun it. I stopped watching the mirror so I could focus on driving safely, despite my mother’s hysteria and the tornado’s brief touchdowns as it skipped along the street parallel to ours. By the time we arrived at the next stoplight, it was gone and the storm sirens were wailing.

To this day, the only tornadoes I’ve ever seen are those in books or videos. Until I spot one with my newly acquired training, I will have to settle for those types of tornado sightings. I just hope that when I do spot one, it isn’t headed towards my house.

Stale mac ‘n cheese

Sometime over the last few months, I seem to have lost my ability to come up with interesting, nutritious meals for my family. I spend plenty of money at Walmart every week, yet buy the same things over and over again- orange juice, cereal, bread (I get the milk and eggs at Sam’s– it’s cheaper there). My cupboards and freezers are full, but there’s never anything to eat.

Since nobody was home Monday night, I decided to make dinner out of whatever I found in boxes or cans. That’s when I decided to have a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner. I didn’t have to worry about making anything interesting or nutritious for the family– the boxed dinner was interesting to me because it was going to fill my belly.

While heating up the water, I grabbed a few of the uncooked noodles out of the box to chew on- I know, it’s a weird habit of mine. The taste was unmistakable- they were stale! Too late now, as I was starved and not in the mood to start over looking for a suitable dinner. I scanned the box for the ‘Best By Date’- it was October 2008. Heck!- that wasn’t so long ago. Might as well eat it, I figured, since I had already opened the box.

I went ahead and cooked the noodles, threw in two pieces of processed American cheese to boost flavor of the powdered fake cheese, and ate my slightly off-flavored, stale dinner for one. It was a good thing I was so hungry or I don’t think I would have eaten more than the first bite. But it got me to thinking: how much more in my cabinets and freezers has passed its ‘Best By Date’?

I checked around and found a small bag of flour with no dates on it, but I know it’s been sitting in the pantry for years (yes, years!). Two tiny meal-worm skins were sitting on top of the bag– yuck! I found two boxes of Minute Brown Rice, both opened, likely both are stale- or wormy. I found a box of Ritz Whole Wheat crackers with a date of April 4, 2006. Wow! They’re about to celebrate their third birthday in the pantry. I don’t even want to know what those taste like! Looks like I’ll have to sneak them out to the birds (my husband hates it when I put out moldy bread or stale crackers for the birds- because it messes up his yard!).

I bet that if I really cleaned out the pantry and freezers, I’d be throwing out a lot of food (and money). That’s probably why I can’t bring myself to do it. And I hate it when I discover stuff like this, yet have little time to tackle such a project. When I was off for two days of vacation last week, I had no idea (okay, the idea hadn’t come to me) that I should have been cleaning out the pantry instead of planning our summer vacation. I’m sure the next time I use a vacation day I won’t remember I need to clean out the pantry, because I won’t be motivated by a stale dinner to embark on such a project. This means more boxes, bags, and containers can secretly celebrate another birthday without my knowledge. They’re probably giving each other high-fives behind closed doors as I write this.

Lost and not found

While I was baking a green bean casserole to take to the cheer banquet tonight, I thought I’d show my mom the video clips from Laura’s state gymnastics meet last Saturday. It seemed like a simple enough activity, but it soon became an exercise in frustration. Why? I could not find the cable that connected my digital camera to the TV. I looked everywhere, because I could not remember any place I had last stowed it. It wasn’t in the computer room, the camcorder bag, the media cabinet or any drawer in the kitchen. I checked my briefcase, my laptop bag, my nightstand and even the box the camera came in!

The more I looked for it, the more frustrated I became with all the stuff I found in drawers, bags, and cabinets. There were chargers for several cell phone models, some of which we no longer own. There were cables for connecting to older computers and, lo and behold, I found my extra charger for my laptop– my old, dead, laptop! I knew we had too much stuff (my husband repeatedly points out this fact), but when the overload of stuff gets to me, then that means it’s reached a tipping point requiring action– on my part, of course.

After nearly 20 years of marriage, my husband has learned not to throw out too much stuff, lest I squawk about it and go digging in the trash. He leaves paper piles, the kids’ memorabilia, and most technology for me to organize (or not) as I see fit. I know I should label the cables and chargers so we know whose cell phone or digital camera it belongs to, but this would be too easy. Besides, I’m organizationally challenged, so it really is tough for me to organize stuff that would be a no-brainer for people like my husband.

My mom suggested decorative boxes shaped like stacks of books for those cables. That’s a great idea, since I love books and could use some attractive organizational containers. But I know what happens to stuff I put in file cabinets or boxes (even see-through ones)– out of sight, out of mind. I’d still lose those cables, only to find them one day after the digital cameras and cell phones were long gone, labeled with the name of the cheerleader who was now a grown woman.

Double-booked

Tonight my husband and I will have to split up and each take a child to an event. Laura has her cheer banquet and Eric has his cub baseball dinner/fundraiser. The funny thing is, we’ll be at the same facility, but in different rooms. How weird is that? Maybe we can carpool!

It may one of the few times the kids will be in high school at the same time. Laura is only 2 years and 5 months older than Eric, yet she’s 3 years ahead in school. His summer birthday was the reason for the gap– which means he’s one of the oldest kids in his class. My kids never went to middle school together- she was off to high school when he entered middle school. When Laura is a senior, Eric will be a freshman. Maybe they can carpool then, unless they have totally incompatible schedules.

The funny thing about tonight’s two events– mine is a potluck dinner (what we Midwesterners call it when everybody brings a dish to eat), while the baseball shindig is a fundraiser– everybody brings their checkbook. Nothing uniquely Midwestern about that!

Mysterious teenagers

My almost sixteen-year-old daughter is keeping so much to herself these days, I feel like I hardly see her. When she’s not at gymnastics practice or cheering at games or with her friends, she holes up in her room for hours on end. Tonight she briefly emerged from her room to use the computer, then silently stole back up to her room when she was finished. I think the cat would have made more noise padding across the carpet. I know this is typical teen behavior, but it’s so weird coming from the very same child who used to pester me no end to play with her or who would follow me around so much, I christened her My Shadow.

Along with not seeing much of my daughter comes the feeling that I hardly know her as well as I used to. She recently asked me if she could get her navel pierced (of course NOT) and she’s expecting a set of car keys for her sixteenth birthday next month (of course NOT to that request too). To top it all off, she’s super-defensive whenever I ask her questions, no matter how innocent they are. I know this is typical teenage behavior, so I’m trying not to take offense and not let my trust in her waver. But it’s hard to not get mad back at her when she snaps at me for asking what I think are innocent questions, like where’s she’s going and who is going to be there. I know she thinks I’m giving her the third degree, but these are the same questions I’ve always asked– it’s her response to them that’s changed, not the questions themselves.

For now, my thirteen-year-old son is actually more pleasant to be around than my daughter is– when I can pry his hands off the computer keyboard or the PlayStation3 controller. He still talks to me and will answer my questions– and as long as he has no fascinating electronics in his room, can usually be spotted glued to the couch, playing his electronics. I need to further develop my relationship with him before he eventually shuts me out of his life (and asks to pierce body parts), just as his sister is now doing. Maybe by the time he quits talking to me, she’ll emerge from her room (without any surprise piercings) and want me back in her life. One can hope it works out this way… at least I hope it does before she goes off to college in a few years– where she can pierce all sorts of body parts without either our permission or our knowledge.

Need some advice?

I’m the type who likes to consult others and is willing to take their advice, especially if I ask for it. I’m a firm believer that I don’t always have all the answers (or even the right ones) and that different viewpoints can shed light on what may seem to me like a closed door. If several people all give me the same advice, I figure they can see something I can’t and it would be wise of me to listen to them.  

Then there’s my mom. She constantly gives me advice, whether or not I need it or want it. I rarely have to ask her for her advice, because I get such a steady stream of it, even in the briefest of conversations with her. Most of her sentences begin with “You ought to…” or “You should…” Substitute the word “you” with my kids names’ or my husband’s name, and you have a never-ending onslaught of unsolicited advice– for all family members and all occasions.

Nothing we do or don’t do, or have or don’t have escapes her continuous barrage of advice. I’m not exaggerating or kidding about this situation. For instance, she recently read an article in Newsweek about kids who are writing programs for the Apple iPhone and making lots of money. Twice in two days, she told me my teenage son “should be writing programs for the Apple iPhone and start making millions of dollars.” She was dead serious. Okaaay– I told her we don’t have iPhones and he doesn’t know how to write a single line of programming code. But it didn’t derail her– it only prompted her to offer more advice! Without skipping a beat, she said, “He ought to take some classes in computer programming. You should sign him up next summer– or now.” Aaaaaaggghhh! See what I mean?

So I asked my husband for advice on how to deal with her, since he has the ability to cut to the chase and see things vastly differently than I do. He told me not to argue with her (I didn’t think I was, but maybe he’s right). When I counter her advice with my version of “that’s not possible…” or “we can’t do that now…,” he says I’m arguing with her. Whatever you call it, my replies to her are encouraging her to continue giving me advice, even if that’s not my intention. His advice: humor her and throw the ball back in her court.

How do I do that, I asked? He told me that whenever she offers her advice, I should ask her to give me the information necessary to act on that advice, or to take care of it for us. So when she says our son should be writing programs for the iPhone, I should tell her to get us the software he needs to write the programs and we’ll put him right to work on it. Eeeeek! That type of reply is totally outside of my natural behavior towards her and her advice. I feared that kind of reply would anger her, since she easily gets mad if she misunderstands someone (she’s been mad at my brother for over ten years over a misunderstanding about their holiday plans). My husband assured me she wouldn’t get mad and encouraged me to try his advice.

The next day, she was advising me (again, without me asking for it) on how to regulate the amount of time my son spent playing his handheld game during his sister’s upcoming gymnastics meet. She said I should make him stop playing his game and watch her compete– and that I should time him with a stopwatch so he knows how long to be on or off his gaming device. Again, she was dead serious. Yeah, right, I thought. But instead of telling her I didn’t have a stopwatch or I didn’t think he cared about watching the meet, I offered her the chance to come with us and be in charge of my son, stopwatch and all. The conversation paused for a minute (I cringed, thinking she was about to get mad), then she chuckled. Instead of offering more advice, she never said another word about how I should handle my son and his handheld game during the meet. Mission accomplished! My husband’s advice worked!

I will say there were three times in my life when I did listen to my mom’s oft-repeated, never-ending advice: 1. ) When she said I should see Europe before I settled down and got married; 2.) When she told me I should move in with my boyfriend (now husband) if I thought he was the one I wanted to marry; and, 3.) When she thought I should go back to school to get my masters in library science degree. She was most shocked when I took her up on option #2; she said she never actually meant for me to take her advice.

The Chauffer

One of my errands on the way home from work tonight was to pick up my impatient son at a friend’s house, drive him home so he could quickly shower and grab a bite to eat, then rush him back over to that friend’s house so they could head to a movie. While watching my son leave the house and saunter to the car, I noticed he has taken on the aloof air of a teenage boy, one who is annoyed that his mom’s late arrival is cutting into his ‘prep time’ to get ready for a night out with the guys. This is the same boy who prefers to stay home on weekend nights, reluctantly showers for school most days and won’t brush his teeth unless I tell him to. I guess the gift of Axe body spray and Abercrombie shirts for Christmas transformed him into a full-fledged teenage boy. That, or the promise of seventh grade girls at the theater tonight…

My daughter was itching for a ride to a friend’s house too, but wasn’t ready when we left, so I had to go back home and get her. She was exchanging Christmas gifts with two friends who are sisters and had been working on their gifts since late this afternoon. She had been looking forward to giving them their gifts since she uploaded digital pictures for prints and laid out rough drafts of their photo collages several days ago.

Hopefully one or both of my kids will get rides home later tonight, when I’m in my jammies and have removed my contacts, the only visual aids I wear that allow me to see at night (I can no longer fake it with my ancient eyeglasses– the prescription is too old and I struggle to see important things, like lines along the edges of the road).

After dropping off my daughter, I thought about how nice it would be if she could drive herself or her brother to their activities, since she’s almost sixteen. Then I realized she would be gone even more if she had the freedom to just hop in the car and drive off. I would miss sitting in a driveway, watching her confident but small figure knocking at the door, waiting until it opens and the house swallows her up. I wouldn’t be able to admire my son’s lanky figure as he shuffles around the front of my car, illuminated by my headlights, then settles into the seat beside me, where I see his still-smooth facial skin.

Instead, I will have to worry about other, careless drivers who are intoxicated or busy sending text messages on their cell phones while driving. As my mother did before me, I will not sleep until I know they’re home, safe and sound in their beds. In the meantime, if they need rides, they know I’ll take them or they can call or text me and I’ll come get them. I’ll be glad to put my contacts back in, throw on some sweatpants and venture out into the darkness. It’s peace of mind for all of us.

Going on strike

I was out of town for three days last month, only to come home at 9 pm on the third day to a sink full of dirty dishes. They weren’t my dirty dishes, mind you, but those of my husband and kids. They must have been saving them up for me to do when I got back, in case I was bored or didn’t have enough to do as it was. It was so thoughtful of them! So for the next two nights, I decided to add my own dirty dishes to the mix.

Still, nobody bothered to do the dishes either of those nights. There were more important things to do, like watch Survivor and play Solitaire on the computer, or play video games on the PlayStation 2. I would have let the dishes go another day, but by Saturday morning, the smell of sour milk soured my appetite– and besides– there weren’t any clean bowls or spoons for cereal. Even the backup supply of plastic spoons and margarine bowls were piled up in the sink. Guess who ended up washing the dishes so she would stop gagging?

In the last three days, I’ve been sick– and again– the laundry, dishes and housework came to a complete standstill. My house looks just like it did the day before I got sick– Christmas decorations half-hung, mail unopened, dishes piled up in the sink (again!). I might as well have been abducted by aliens. Oh, my husband did a load or two of laundry, but that was it. Nobody put away the clean clothes (remember, only I know where they go). While I spent Saturday in bed fighting off an evil cold, no homework was done, a grounded son snuck out for a few hours’ of play at the neighbor’s house while dad napped in the La-Z-Boy, and I’m sure nobody ate anything other than chocolate kisses or M&M’s for lunch.

I hate it when they all think it’s my job to do all of the cooking, shopping, cleaning, laundry, or dish washing, even though I work outside the home, travel for business and occasionally get sick. I should mention that I’m also the Chief Exterminator, Gum-Remover-from-the-Dryer-Expert, Merchandise Return Specialist, and the Feline Behavior & Maintenance Expert– the only one who can determine that the cat is meowing because her food & water bowls are empty and her litter box is full.

I do delegate tasks, but they only occasionally get done– mostly they get forgotten. Apparently the master’s degree I earned all those years ago uniquely qualified me for single-handedly running a household in addition to doing paid intellectual work. Had I known this at the time I was pursuing the degree, I might have chosen a different educational path and saved myself a lot of money.

The thought of going on strike is a fantasy of mine, one that I envision doing as an act of revenge (if I ever got angry enough). But I’ve discovered that even when I’m in bed sick (which is a form of strike, although unplanned), it doesn’t change anything in my household. Nobody thinks to do the dishes, laundry, or anything else. Life goes on without me, exactly as though I weren’t there. Maybe I need to be abducted by aliens– surely there’s got to be a planet somewhere out there where women are pampered.

High school reunions

On Saturday night, my husband and I went to dinner with my best friend and her husband, then on to our 25th high school reunion. It turned out to be a fun night, although reunions are always a little stressful. I don’t know about guys, but we girls worry about every thing from the size of our butts to the crow’s feet around our eyes. We get our hair colored, our nails done, and we shop for the perfect outfit we hope will impress guys and girls alike. We make sure we have current (and adorable) pictures of our kids in our wallets, since we know someone will ask to see them. And besides that, we know we want to show them off, right?

The funniest thing that happened over and over last night was that all of us, despite our primping and preparing, was how we struggled to see those pictures when we pulled them out of our wallets. The lights were low and our eyes have aged, so we put them at arm’s length until we could focus on them. The same thing happened when we took photos with our digital cameras– we squinted and positioned the camera a comfortable distance from our eyes in order to see ourselves in the instant picture. Some of us had reading glasses in our purses, but all of us were too foolishly proud to get them out and put them on. Maybe at the next reunion…

It was fun catching up with friends, but sad that so few classmates returned for the reunion. Out of a graduating class of over 400 students, fewer than 50 responded to the invitation. We knew of many who lived in town, but choose not to come for whatever reason. It’s sad to see dwindling interest in getting together as we get older, especially in this day and age where people are supposedly more connected than ever with cell phones and the Internet. I went to my high school only two of the four years and don’t know most of my classmates, since I didn’t grow up with them. Yet I still think it’s important to reconnect with them every five years and maintain the friendships I developed. I think those relationships are important to our mental and social health. Seeing my classmates every few years is something I look forward to, in spite of the nervousness of preparing for it and the inevitable march of time away from that day we graduated all those years ago.