A roving report on a summer's end

I have boat legs and the keyboard is sliding across the desk.

I have just stepped off the “Morning Dove” after four glorious days of sailing on good old Rainy Lake during the annual fall cruise with the Rendezvous Yacht Club.

I cannot imagine a better way to welcome the crisp autumn than to be in a sailboat in a hideaway cove in a visual theatre of red maples.

Don’t get me wrong; it was a cold and rainy “get there.”

In fact, the big mama of daily forecasts must have been having a real belly laugh up there, repeating the same crummy scenario I’ve seen twice now in this fall cruise realm. She did however pull some temperature and sunshine strings too, giving us a chance to dry out and switch from wool sweaters to cotton short sleeves.

But hey, I am a northern girl and I love this northern country ‘round the clock and back again.

So there I was sailing away from shore, loving every minute of it, bobbing up and down like a duck, clad in the same pathetic mismatched little rain suit. The same handsome, kind man remains at the helm in my life—a most excellent companion and navigation teacher too who strengthens my resolve to tackle a rolling sea.

He flashes that great smile at “Little Miss” despite her vintage “Russ Troll” doll hairdo whipped into a coif by the lake winds of September.

I stayed true to my autumnal pattern and went for a swim in the lake. I did not shout an ice-cold scream, but I wanted to. Instead I was invigorated by my northern “Little Mermaid” spirit. 

Once again, I did try the whiskey—Scotch whiskey this time. Oh Lord. Whose idea was that anyway? Despite my proud ancestral bloodlines to Scotland, Scotch whiskey tastes really, really bad.

I’m not even sure why I had three glasses of that nefarious beverage. Perhaps I was trying to impress the 14^th century spirit of William Wallace, the great warrior of Scottish independence. 

All I know is that I spoke to Ralph the next morning and he said I was a fool. 

Insert jolly roving laughter here.

And oh yes, Robert Service was in the house. The recital of “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” filled us up and laid open the importance of the old traditions of reading really good poetry from books out loud among adults.

The stage was set in the old Malamute saloon and we took our starring roles as the lady known as “Lou”, a crazed miner, and “Dangerous Dan,” very seriously (with lots of laughter.)

We even had a special effects department who controlled the boat cabin lighting in the dark moment of gunfire between the two storybook rivals. Fun, fun, fun.

Too soon, too soon, with the end of the fall cruise we closed the book on a summer’s worth of sailing, but we squeezed that orange really well.

Once again, thank you sailors for enriching my experience. Thank you for this day and that, and the want to do it all again next year.

Henry Rollins penned, “We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.”

Indeed I do.

How I spent my summer hiatus

How is it possible that seven weeks have zipped by since I last made notes in this column space? 

I have in fact been gunning to sit down and tell you for the past three weeks all about what’s been happening in my neck of the woods, yet somehow the critical time frame that I usually cordon off as writing space crumbled away again and again like a dry bran muffin while I was busy squeezing the last drops of juice out of my summer orange.

Maybe I should start by agreeing with fellow Times’ columnist Wendy Stewart who last week wrote, “I loved the freedom of summer holidays—the lack of routine and the impromptu adventures . . .” 

Yup.

Nonetheless I was feeling guilty about taking time away from my weekly writing session until I realized history was repeating itself.

13 months ago I wrote a column about being back to the writing table after—you guessed it—seven weeks of summer holidays!! Go figure.

And once again I squeezed the orange juice out of my orange this summer, and no matter her short season I am thankful for every day of it. 

Yet it seems like only yesterday (though five months have passed) since I wrote about how I was wearing spring weather like a favorite old good luck t-shirt. “I wore it like an old softened faded pair of jeans that fit just right. I wore it like a reunion with a best friend after a long while of being apart. I wore it well.”

And yet now, here I am rushing to beat the clock of chores before the sun of mid-September sets far sooner than the one I remember on that July day, just yesterday?

In the last seven weeks I’ve filled my life with the adventures of my summer, sailed Rainy Lake to nearly my heart’s content, penned my diary days with “August whatever 2014” because I was a free spirit and the date didn’t matter.

And I watched my old farmhouse get an amazing facelift. She has all new windows and new siding with all the trimmings and best of all, a second chance.

I have been afraid of change, but not this time. This house renovation was a Cinderella project, round three times and more fantastic and gorgeous than I ever could have imagined.

I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way but I do. I am no longer the caretaker. I am home.

And while my mind got to wandering through all the possibilities for more upgrading, my two cats—obviously more afraid of change than I—dug themselves under the freshly restored back porch—and remained under there for nearly 24 hours until dragged out by the scruff.

And then it was the last day of August, arriving like a speeding train.

And then, after eight years of living here, I discovered chokecherry trees in my yard.

13 cups of ripe berries and nine jars later I had my very first batch of homemade jelly—which actually turned out to be nine jars of chokecherry sauce for pancakes or ice cream because the pectin didn’t set. 

Life is full of setbacks; little ones, big ones and time waits for no one.

And here we are almost able to spot October on the horizon, while reaching for a sweater and the electric blanket and wondering where did the summer go?

I hope you squeezed the juice out of your orange. Keep squeezing.

A not so "purrfect" start to my day

I’ve become a “sleep geek.”

In fact, most of the time I get enough good sleep (7-8 hours most nights) that I can wake up on my own at a predetermined hour without an alarm clock going off first.

Of course that is if I’m not stirred from my biorhythmic slumber by the undulating tortuous sound of my cat throwing up outside under my bedroom window.

There’s nothing quite like that kind of wake up call.

Invariably on any given morning I check to see if the cat wants in at 5 a.m., which is usually when I wake up. Sometimes the cat has one paw stuck through the crack in the door before I open it—a sure sign that it would like to come inside. 

Sometimes the cat is nonchalantly strolling up to the door looking this way and that, having just finished throwing up and knowing full well (after many similar episodes) that barfing in the early morning hour will send me to the door to give it a piece of my mind—at which point the cat saunters on by my scolding pointed finger and into the great indoors, as if I’m not even there.

But let’s not forget a third “cat at the door in the morning” scenario—the one where my cat does as writer Pam Brown touts and “works out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause the most inconvenience.”

That exact place would be about two body lengths away on the porch step seemingly unable to decide what to do next, while I stand there like a moron coaxing it with cat language as an army of mosquitoes hitch a ride into the house on my pajamas.

Then, just as I give up and close the door, the cat slips through the opening and—as William Lyon Phelps said—pours his body on the floor like water.

The routine is endlessly predictable.

The cat will inhale a mouthful of food, perhaps throw it up on the floor in the porch and go have a nap or want back outside again.

The latter choice is made clear to me by thwacking relentlessly with his paw on the screen door that leads into the kitchen after I’ve gone inside to have my critical first cup of coffee.

I have no idea how the stupid cat figured out how to do that. The first time I heard it I nearly had a heart attack thinking a stranger was trying to get in.

When I peered cautiously out, there was the cat staring at me gesticulating towards the outer door the way my border collie used to do when it wanted to go outside to pee.

And if all that cat drama isn’t enough to make me want to crawl back into bed for a sleep do-over, I can always open the door to find the cat sitting there with a Cheshire grin and the long tail of a field mouse still protruding and wriggling from its mouth wherein I bolt to the bathroom for my very own undulating tortuous round of morning sickness.

There’s nothing quite like that kind of wake up call either.

Loss for words met with gaggle of thought

Here’s the thing.

I could tell you that the fact that I don’t write a column every week is because I’ve been so busy with other things that I have no time for plunking out my chronicles on a keyboard.

But if I took that stance, my nose would grow like Pinocchio’s.

Truth be told, I have loads of time to write and more ideas and dreams and aspirations to write about than anyone can imagine.

Yet, I admit that on a daily basis I readily find countless other things to fill my time so that there is none left in which to write.

I’m a chronic procrastinator who blatantly denies and fights against a clear-cut opportunity.

Why is that?

How can I expect anyone to rely on that kind of hiccupped continuity?

And yet I tout my belief and confidence in the Universal plan, which is patient and nudges me with small reminders to put in face time with my laptop.

I can’t tell you how thick as thieves the its plan is around here, waving its green flag and leaving the days wide open for me the writer, even as I continue to put up roadblocks at nearly every turn.

Why is that?

Heaven knows there remains enough comedy and drama in my neck of the woods to fill the word count, including a very bold skunk, a demented squirrel, and a ghost deer that keeps eating the tops off all my budding flowers. 

Yet I feel like my writing is stooped in a vat of literary molasses.

No matter how I look at it, I am my own worst enemy, second-guessing my ability and believing the dream-stealing ego that resides in me, while everyone else around me knows better.

Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, and Tom Russell wouldn’t be the writers and singers they are if they thought like that. Any good author in the entire world wouldn’t be one if they thought like that all the time. 

Perhaps my mind muddle is a product of the infinite slump born of a stunted summer that’s had me under a grip of relentless wind and rain.

It is my hope that the weeks will get warmer, the fall and winter catalogue will be delayed at the printers, and many more weekends will come my way out on Rainy Lake in a sailboat with my captain.

If nothing else, I once again can write about the 18 winged creatures who move about daily in long waddling lines in my yard, leaving behind their trademark green poo and enough goose down to start a pillow factory—all the while shaking their long necks in scold of me when I try to get to “my” barn or to “my” garden.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and the rabid skunk, demented squirrel, the flower bud eater, and the geese will pass through the yard at the same time and I’ll get a photograph. 

“Beth’s Wild Kingdom.” 

Yep, that’s my neck of the woods all right.

It's not a question of what, but who

When I was a little kid I wanted to be an animal keeper when I grew up and have an animal farm. That was going to be my life’s work—taking care of animals.

Maybe that dream was a spin-off of the “animal hospital” my mother always talked about. She said it was where all my toys went to get their “play wounds” mended when I went to bed at night.

And she was right. When I woke up in the morning, my teddy bear would have a neat little row of stitches and a Band-Aid, or perhaps a little white bandage covering the spot on his leg where the stuffing had once spilled out.

“Raggedy Anne” would have her eye sewn on again and the arm on my walking doll would be re-attached.

I believed in that imaginary animal hospital for a long time and planned my own such sanctuary for when I grew up.

I would build a cabin back in the woods on an old road known around here as, “Blueberry Mike’s,” and I would look after dogs and cats. I think I was 10 years old.

I dreamed I’d be an actress in Hollywood. I’d be “discovered,” given the dramatic role of my life, own a fur coat and a convertible, be famous, and be nominated for an “Oscar.”  I researched acting schools and modeling schools and planned a course for myself that would take me straight to the red carpet. I was 11 years old, I think.

I would be a biologist, too.

I used to sit in my dad’s canoe in the creek by our house as a young environmental observer and seine minnows, water spiders and big, fat bloodsuckers—you know the kind—the flat, wide black ones that slink in the tannin depths of creek water.

I studied mice and insects and birds and fishes and amphibians and by the time Christmas rolled around in 1972, my enthusiasm did not go unrewarded.

Under the tree, wrapped just for me, was Anna Botsford Comstock’s “Handbook of Nature Study.” It was 937 pages long. I was 12 years old.

I treated that book like it was made of gold. I collected cornflowers and leaves and four-leaf clovers and pressed them between the pages. I learned about wolves, and katydids, and salamanders, the earth, and the skies.

Ms. Comstock swept me away on a carpet of possibilities. The book’s yellow cover was worn off long ago, but the book remains on my bookshelf to this day, well loved and holding very old, flattened remnants of those pressed plants.

I’ve never lost my interest in all things “nature,” even though my desire to be a biologist waned long before I reached my mid-teenage years.

No matter. I had other dreams of “what” I wanted to be and the list grew to include a bush pilot, psychologist, flight attendant, and travel agent.

What I am today is no one of those careers. I am a mosaic, pressed out of many experiences and, in fact, I don’t think I will ever have an exact answer to the “what” I am.  

However, who I am is getting clearer every day.  

Still learning to sail my ship

I wish I had more courage.

To paraphrase my favorite author Melody Beattie;

“I may not be a great warrior. I might not lead explorations to the North Pole or climb Mount Everest, but I still need courage.”

I need courage daily it seems and most certainly almost every time I come home after a long day at work or after a time on a weekend getaway. 

I’m still learning to make peace with living alone and how to accept the reality of where I am in my life, and to accept it for what it is. 

I’m also still learning how to juggle the many unbalanced moments in my neck of the woods that revolve around the upkeep and maintenance required here as a single homeowner.  

I’m also still learning how to design just the right mix between work and play.

All of these things require courage and I need courage every day.

This avenue of thought has been ruminating in my mind of late because I was clued in recently to the fact that the social expectations of recovery from tragedy and trauma and loss continue to plague the ones who live in the mire of these past sorrows.

And I’m here to admit that even after two and a half years since my life changed in an instant, I remain a student of adaptation. And I still need courage every day to go forward in a way that honors the love I have for the journey and for myself.

I continue to have a really good support base in my little corner of the planet. I have family and friends who make a day better and those who make life better and at least one who provides both for me in an incomparable way.

Yet I still need courage every day to believe that change is good and change is positive and change is possible. It’s always a possibility, right Dad?

I have read and written and talked and been counseled and cried and shouted and swore an oath to move forward in any way I can and still—it takes courage do that every day.

And sometimes I don’t have any courage to bring to the plate. I still am learning that that empty plate is okay too. I am still learning that it’s okay to be carried when my courage is nowhere to be found. Good friends figure that stuff out and have strong arms.

“Honest friends are doorways to our souls, and loving friends are the grasses that soften the world.”

And the special friend who after quality time together asks me if my “tank” is full and means it, that too, takes courage.

Brene Brown said, “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

Here I am. 

That northern lake takes the cake

He’d been hinting at it for about a week, edging ever closer to what I’d hoped would be the ultimate question and result in the day I’ve been waiting for since the smooth-talking outdoorsman first put a minnow on my fishing hook.

“I was thinking about going trout fishing this weekend. Would you like to go along?” he said from the other end of the phone line.

There would be no trying to contain my inner childlike glee this time, no hiding my absolute enthusiasm at the prospect of landing a fighting machine, cousin to a salmon.

I did a fist pump in the air, kicked my leg forward and up and smiled wide as the Grand Canyon.

“You bet I do!” I replied.

Immediately I pictured myself landing a record weight trout that would take me an hour to reel in. I would use every muscle I had. Maybe it would pull me overboard and I’d have to wrestle it into the boat. The trout would be so big I wouldn’t be able to pick it up for that photograph in the latest fishing magazine.

My resolve was crystal clear. The lean, mean fighting machine swimming in those deep cold waters out there in a northern lake had no idea who was coming for him.

“But there’s only one catch,” added the man with the tackle box. I’d heard that cautionary statement before but this time I knew he wasn’t going to say we’d have to snowshoe two miles in to get to the almighty lake.

Instead it was a call to the crowing rooster in me and an early start to the fishing trip.

No problem. I was born early—5:20 a.m. to be exact.

It was like Christmas morning on that “troutful” day. I flew out of bed and into fishing gear, packed a lunch, slammed a coffee, stuffed my pack with chocolate and mosquito repellant and waited on the street corner at the pick-up point with my straw hat.

I was so “bare bones basic” that my smooth-talking outdoorsman nearly drove right by me, mistaking me for a pedestrian.

In the boat on that northern lake, I waited eagerly for my fishing rod to be loaded with a flashy, smart-looking roguish lure like the one the outdoorsman had tied to his own line. All I could think about was that rod-snatching bulldog cheetah of freshwater that had my name tattooed on his gills.

Hopes were dashed when I saw the lure my fishing partner pulled out of the tackle box for my fishing rod, coupled with a lead weight much bigger than I thought I needed.

I didn’t know a thing about trout fishing but I was sure he’d made mine an ill-fated mission.

“I’d like to change to something else. I think the weight is too heavy and I’d like a bigger lure,” I proposed, after a long, long while of trolling in vain.

“Really?” he queried, in a curiously responsive way. “When you catch your first trout, then you can change it,” he said, smiling.

Empty-handed. Yes, that would be me.

There are times when I know what I’m talking about and times when I do not. This was one of those times.

It was all I could do to reel in—catch and release—of four big, beautiful, strong, fighting machines including a 30” fat lunker.

And when I gave the brute back to the deep the outdoorsman asked, “Do you want to change up that lure now?”

I just smiled my “you were right” smile and said, “Not in a million years,” as I watched that gorgeous fish jettison away.

I am the luckiest girl I know.

Dry spell not an option here

Just when I decided I had nothing to write about this week, a chipmunk got into my basement.

I stood in the doorway of the porch in my housecoat with my coffee cup in hand and scowled at the rain pitching down on my soon-to-be growing too fast lawn.

I still have to install my lawn tractor battery. I am pathologic optimist in my view on life, but you can bet I will forget it’s the positive side that gets connected first when I attach the cables to the battery terminal. 

So there I was leaning back taking it easy watching the sky fall, when I felt a claw-like flit of movement over the top of my foot and up my calf under my housecoat.

I squealed and looked down to see a bug-eyed chipmunk—rabid I think—or clearly terrorized after it realized I was not wearing anything under my housecoat. It leapt over my feet and down the stairs to the basement in a millisecond.

Two cats live here and neither of them saw thing as they slept with their big fat bellies pouring over the side of the chairs in the porch. “You’re both fired!” I scolded. All I got back was the flat stare. 

My basement is not that big, but it is full of stuff that makes great hiding places for a chipmunk.

I must have looked a sight in my morning getup—a modern-day “Ma Kettle” with my hair all askew as I crept around down there peering in boxes and bags full of stored coats and blankets hoping not to be attacked by a small flying ball of rodent fur.

Lucky for me I found a landing net for my big fish story hanging on the basement wall. I could poke at things with it and prevent the little critter from eating off my hand if I found where it was hiding.

But no sooner had I grabbed and held the net up above my head to explore the shelf junk, did the chipmunk explode from between the deep fryer and a fan and straight into the capture zone.

If you think you’ve seen the “Tasmanian Devil” in your two-year old child having a conniption in the cookie aisle at the grocery store when you say “No,” to that snack, you haven’t seen a chipmunk stuck in a landing net. 

It was all I could do to keep the writhing and possessed animal from vaulting out and—to the edges of my imagination—down the front of my housecoat. I raced up the stairs and outside, set the net down and stood far back.

Within a few minutes the landing net had been eaten clear through and the good riddance chipmunk was last seen headed east to the sunflower seed sanctuary.

As for me, I also have another story to write about the groundhog that cornered me in the tool shed that same afternoon. There’s never a dull day around here. 

I miss my eyelashes

My day starts around 5:30 a.m. every morning with the first of three cups of “Caldwell” coffee, a small red-foiled square of “Dove” chocolate (maybe two), while curled up in my reading chair with my self-help books (and I still need A LOT of help!) Oh and a novel—a really, really good novel. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt. I’m on page 723 and I have only 48 more to go. I don’t want the book to end. 

Many mornings I get carried away with “me” time and then have to rush to get the rest of the things done that I need to do before the workday begins.

I get sucked into the world of reading only to look up at the clock and realize I have less than 20 minutes left in which to eat, get dressed, and drive the eight kilometers into town to work.

Then again I’m a fast track expert. I can leap from my reading chair, vault into the kitchen, fire a piece of bread into the toaster on my way to the makeup mirror while feeding the cat and making my lunch with my other hand.

I’m really, really good at multi-tasking.

I’m not so good at remembering to stand far enough away from a bonfire so that I don’t burn off my eyelashes.

I figured out the latter on one such rushed Monday morning while looking in the bathroom mirror when repeated applications of mascara from a new tube didn’t do a thing for me.

On closer examination, followed by a “deer in the headlights” reaction to my own reflection, I realized that my eyelashes on both sides were nearly gone.

“I smell burnt hair,” I had said to my outdoorsman the day before while he was eating a ham sandwich as I stepped back from a close stoking of the bonfire I’d worked on for a couple of hours prior to lunch. 

A quick reflex of hand to my ball cap and ponytail and, no, I was not on fire. I figured the smell was the singed fibers of my lumberjack coat and gave it no further thought.

And the next morning, there I was staring at eyelash stubble.

Thank the heavens above that my eyebrows were spared. I would rather hide under my bed for two months waiting for my eyebrows to grow in than draw them back on like I did in high school. 

That bout of stupidity left me with a look of permanent surprise on my face after a marathon plucking session forced my hand. Never again.

I was so sad about my eyelash funk I picked up my iPhone and asked “Siri” (the personal assistant and knowledge navigator application for Apple’s IOS) “Who is the fairest of them all?”

I expected the voice to reply, “Why you of course.”

Siri, who is programmed to know my name as Beth, was faster than a three-dollar pistol. “Snow White. Is that you?”

I flat-stared the phone and retorted, “Siri, my name is Beth, not Snow White.”

Siri said, “Ok, from now on I’ll call you ‘Beth Not Snow White,’ Ok?”

Fine. Two can play this game I thought to myself.

“I’d like my name to be ‘Little Miss,’” I said.

“Okay, from now on I’ll call you ‘Little Mess,’” said Siri.

Oh brother, indeed I am. I think I need a holiday.

Another memorable egg hunt

The glee was stacked as high as the pancakes and syrup they poked in around my table that morning before the hunt began. Goals were shared about egg collection, theories on where to look cooked up like the crispy pieces of bacon that followed the forks full of pancake down the hatch.

Syrup dripped off plates, sticky napkins were everywhere, and half-empty glasses of apple juice sat cloudy with flecks of food floating within.

At the call to the hunt, little people had their coats and boots on without squabble and guaranteed on faster than the ordinary “put on your coat” school day when a mother’s moustache grows an inch and her patience shrinks waiting for her kids to get dressed before the school bus drives away.

And like the sprinter at the crack of the starter pistol or the break shot after the eight ball, six little peppers tore from the start line in a burst of sonic energy and out in all directions for the annual Easter Egg hunt in Granny’s big yard. 

More than 80 colorful plastic eggs filled with chocolates had been placed carefully or tossed haphazardly (depending on who hid them, as I had a three year old helper) earlier that day in all manner of hiding places around here.

Charlie, my little farm hand, hid his share of the eggs in chipmunk burrows, under the woodpile, and in tree seedlings and then by the afternoon forgot where, when it was time to find them again. Priceless.

My little hurricane tribe wasted no time terrorizing the outdoors, squealing with delight as they hauled their egg pails to where I was standing smiling, as the life around me flowered that April day.

I think I saw my old red barn stretch taller when fresh young minds poured through the door looking for eggs in there, too.

And then it was time to go inside and eat the chocolate prizes. And yes, I would be sending the kids home with their moms at that crucial juncture when the sugar-highs and “choco-caffeine” adrenaline turned them all into Tasmanian devils.

Afterwards, the two older boys went back outside to do “boy” stuff like dig in the anthill and look for mouse skeletons.

No more than five minutes passed when I spotted the younger one, who is six, running across the yard from the barn carrying pieces of  siding. Suddenly I imagined an outer wall of the barn I couldn’t see peeled to the core like an old birch tree.

“Where are you going with those?” I shouted, stopping him dead in his tracks, as his head drooped in being caught and the boards dropped from his arms to the ground.

I had to laugh. It was so funny to see his gestures mimic the defeat of a best-laid plan. I don’t know where he was going with his loot and I haven’t yet gone out to see where that little Tasmanian pepper lifted the boards from.

I’m smiling but I’m afraid to look.

First, break all the rules

American novelist James Paterson took the road less travelled when he began to write books in the mid-70’s. 

After reading “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,” Paterson decided to break all the rules about how he crafted the books he wrote. He embraced “full-throttle freedom,” learned to trust the right side of his brain and “just let go.”

Apparently it has worked rather well for him over the years.

I’ve never read one of Paterson’s novels. However, his reasoning about full-throttle freedom appeals to me because I love to write my way and because his motto is what I wish for in my life, too.

Letting go and freedom. To. Just. Be. Me.

I am a 53-year old woman who still is a girl at heart, a “Little Miss” who trusts the Universal Plan, dreams big dreams for herself, thinks too much about the small stuff sometimes and too little about the big stuff much of the time. I fall down, get up, and try again. I believe that my intuition always is right and yet I don’t always listen to it the first time or the third time. Sometimes years go by and still I don’t listen. Then I learn the hard way.

I am afraid of change and yet I believe in it with all my heart. I wasn’t meant to be alone in this world and I don’t like how many times I’ve had to be there. I’ve learned great lessons when things didn’t turn out the way I had planned. I’ve learned great lessons when they did. I’d like more of the latter, please.

A few days ago I wore spring like a favorite old good luck t-shirt. I wore it like an old softened faded pair of jeans that fit just right. I wore it like a reunion with a best friend after a long while of being apart. I wore it well.

No more downcast face grunting discontent to a snow bank. 

I put away my high-top winter boots, folded up the ski pants and wooly scarves and stuffed them “where the sun don’t shine.” I wore duck boots outside and dodged puddles and skipped over muddy soft spots in the driveway. I smelled thawing dog poop and yes, I liked it. 

I watched with glee the steady trickle of ice-cold water pouring out of the eaves trough spout from the roof. I saw signs of green grass, revealed at the receding snow around my septic tank and was thankful for the human condition.

I drove around town on a sunny day with my car window down and went soaring down the highway with my left arm stuck out the driver’s window like a one-winged airplane.

I made two big decisions last week. I don’t like making big decisions by myself anymore. Still, I do it anyway. I bought six new windows for my house. I picked “Country Lane Red” siding too. 

She’s been an old-looking farmhouse for so long. I guess she’s going to get a second chance.

Second chances are really nice gifts to give ourselves. Believe me, I know. 

First, you have to break the rules and just let go.

This is how I see it

Every day I have choice to make. Happy. Not happy. The happiness balance is tedious, constant work. Sometimes I do it well, sometimes I do appallingly.

Today was one of those “not do it so well” days. My Monday got turned round like the weather and I found myself in the linger of thoughts of all the things I haven’t done with my life, should already have done with my life, and all the in-between mud and sling scenarios.

When that happens and I don’t let it go, like I’ve been taught so many times in the books I read on recovery, I’m raw for the game and it pushes me under like the kid in the swimming pool did when I was nine. 

That little bully, who was a stranger in a pool on a camping trip I took with my parents, pushed me under where I gulped panic water and thought I was going to drown. It happened in the deep end and I couldn’t touch bottom.

“Should’ a could’ a” thoughts don’t nail me to terror like that kid did, yet the nasty duo sure can set me back in my pursuit of an even keeled attitude to the day—and these days, as the temperature leaps from a gorgeously deliriously warm Sunday to the bowels of a blizzard by this Monday night—an even keeled attitude is, to say the least, a paramount check mark on my optimistic albeit warped sense of reality and what I pray is the beginnings of a bloomy and green fourth month of 2014.

Last week I wrote about my impending house renovation and how it’s drying out my eye sockets pouring over the meat and potatoes of the matter.

It’s still keeping me up at night, or at least keeping me from drifting off as I usually do upon laying my head on the pillow. Instead of slipping into unconsciousness I do math tables and measurements and draw up lists of the pros and cons of entering the gates of this project. Then I fall asleep and find myself inside the gates and I can’t get out!

Yes, yes. Leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill.

But here’s the thing. This is how I see it. I figured out where it comes from—all this apprehension, second-guessing, failure to launch bog of thinking that I inevitably find myself mired in.

I haven’t made any big decisions like this in my life for more than two years. I stayed far away from that on purpose—protected myself from having to so that I could keep the outcomes close, and control of them closer. Letting go is hard.

But here’s the thing. When I was nine, suddenly I was in the deep end and I couldn’t touch bottom, and yet upon sinking I fought against my fear and swam for the side. 

The mind can be just as big a bully to progress as a human being can be to his fellow man.

Swim on; like a fish.