The Grammy is back on our farm after being sprung from the hospital! She’s getting comfy in her apartment again and adjusting to the steady stream of caregivers that are now a permanent fixture in her life. And I am thanking God for these angels who work in the elder-care industry, thus allowing me to catch my breath and ponder my dirty house and unkempt farm.
Whoa! Where did the month of December go? Where is all the clean, white snow? Who are these kids with mud on their shoes, and why are they all calling me Mom?!
This is how I've felt lately; In between training the caregivers, filling prescriptions, shopping for the best deals on elder care supplies that Medicare conveniently chooses not to cover, and facing the inevitable “what’s for dinner” question at the end of each very long day.
I believe the applicable word here would be discombobulated.
Nevertheless, all the unpredictability of life lately has made me want to run and hide in The Grammy's apartment and watch movies all day while playing with her hair.
But...Alas! The Husband and kids need me to keep this place in ship-shape. So THEY can sit in The Grammy's apartment and watch movies all day. But, not so fast troops! I'm onto your game. Work before play keeps the spankings away and a little sweat-therapy is good for the soul; or something like that.
To re-cap the last month, we made it through the first blizzard of the season, Grammy’s trip to the hospital, the blur of Christmas and New Years and now we have a respite of warm weather which gives us time to cut and stack more firewood before the next thirty-two rounds of chilly arrive. And since most of our house is warmed by a big black wood stove it seems to work better if we have wood-at-the-ready because that keeps us from having to burn stuffed animals and empty toilet paper rolls for heat.
First up: that big old five-cord-pile-o-wood waiting since last summer to be split and stacked. Up until now, it's been an eye-sore and good-for-nothing; except maybe for practicing new snow boarding techniques during the aforementioned blizzard.On wood-cutting day all hands were on deck and ready to bring order to the chaos; which just happens to be one of my favorite past-times, believe it or not. It often drives The Husband nuts! But I can't help it. It's just who I am.
So, I staked-my-claim and manned my post as being Head-Crazy-Person-And-Stacker-Of-The-Wood.
I assigned the other important jobs to everybody else, like lining up the big rounds for the splitter and then moving them out of the way and trying not to lose a finger in the process.
And after much sweating and grunting and reminding-of-the-kids to keep away from my obsessive-compulsive-paranoid-wood-stacking-routine, I learned a little something. Wanna know what it was? I learned that, if given enough time (and mixed berry smoothies from Checkers Coffee Shop), there really is THE. PERFECT. SPOT for each and every single piece of firewood!
I KNOW! Astonishing, isn't it?! Order from chaos; it's what I do.
So, I got to thinking. The next time we have another month-of-crazy like December? I'll round up the whole family and tackle the next twenty-cord-mountain-o-logs The Husband just bought for me via the Blue and Gold Wrestling Auction. After 21 years of marriage he sure knows how to make his woman happy!
And as someone once said...when the Queen is happy, the Subjects are happy too.
