Boost or no boost

June 13, 2007

If at bedtime you find your husband lying prone and beating his chest with a pair of drumsticks, it can mean one of two things—either he’s in the mood for more than music or the “Rock Star” energy drink is taking effect.
Knowing my neck of the woods, life’s like that, and you never know what you’re going to get.
I have yet to find the need to partake in the caffeine punch that, from time to time, makes its way home with my groceries, and that a certain someone (who shall not be named) says he’s just as surprised as I am to find in the bag.
Besides, with brand names that include “Venom,” “Dynamite,” “Go Fast,” “Flying Horse,” “Monster,” and “AMP,” I’m afraid to ingest the stuff for fear that I’ll grow fangs, blow up while speeding, sprout wings, neigh, turn green, or morph and become a sound system for any number of guitars growing in my living room.
Furthermore, and for the most part, I already have more than enough energy for the two of us anyway.
My energy is palpable, especially when a certain trip is looming on the horizon and into the heart of Minnesota for the annual community garage weekend.
Never mind the fact that the day before we left, I literally spent 12 hours pumping and hauling rain water out of my basement by myself since “Mr. Incredible” wasn’t home from work yet.
But even after that “slave to a soaker” affair, I didn’t crack open a energy drink.
I didn’t have to.
Although I scraped my skeleton off the floor to go pick up my beloved at the bus station, my energy quickly returned looking up at the full moon, pondering the distance, as I fed my flat stare with fire balls at listening to him lament how tired he was from the long ride from the city.
I returned to full throttle energy levels after my shower, but not due to the regenerative powers of the hot water.
A certain someone (who shall not be named) had snuck in to the bathroom to relieve himself and forgot to put the seat down when he flushed, wherein I dropped my toothbrush on the way out of the shower.
Energy drink-free, I blew out of the bathroom with my dripping toothbrush, hair askew and growling loudly at my husband to check his head and also take Jack Elliott’s advice about said seat in his “Squirrel Pie” column in last week’s Times.
Thankfully for all parties involved, there were more important things to focus on, like garage sale issues.
And because it is a fact that what you focus on expands, over the day-long spree of 18 garage sales in Minnesota cottage country, I managed to amass some of the best buys known to woman-kind, including an ornamental hedgehog that promptly drove “Dot” into a barking frenzy when she found it sitting in the screen porch.
And while I know that more junk is just what we didn’t need after down-sizing last year, at least we didn’t have to worry about importing a pathetic piece of sponge half-covered in fabric remnant like we tried to do last year.
But living here on an old farm has its benefits when you find treasures that rival even the best garage sale finds. Finding cool stuff, like an old car parts, gives me energy to do more yard clean-up.
René Panhard and Emile Levassor, who were credited with inventing the first automatic transmission in the late 1800s, were geniuses. But I’d almost bet they never guessed anyone like me would come along and tear apart an old one for innovative candle holders.