So as I’m starting to type this (it took more than one session to write), I’m surrounded by critters: Raki is on the chair, lying between me and the chair back; Mowgli is taking a catnap on the desktop, lying atop a bunch of mail, bills and other paperwork stuff that I’ve been avoiding; Tobey 2 and Jodeo are fidgeting and fussing around at my feet and under my desk. I’d have Monty & Raven, too, except that I have to keep Monty & Tobey separated (so Monty & Raven are in the bedroom). And there’s just really not enough room in my little office for Caesar, Homer & Jolly, but I can hear them chattering to each other downstairs.
* I am not a Summer person.
Well, at least not in this part of the country. I love summers at higher longitudes (i.e., Seattle, Minnesota or Scotland), where the days are warm, not hot, it stays light well into the evening, and the nights are cool. Summer in San Diego is also good – no humidity, and not too hot as long as you’re on the ocean side of the coastal mountains. I think it was multiple tours at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, that spoiled summers for me. I can’t stand hot, humid weather, and for me, anything above 80 degrees (F) is too hot, especially when there is any sort of humidity. The problem is that I avoid doing anything outside when it’s hot & humid, except early in the morning (when I’m usually still sleeping; see below) and in the early evening. But that really cuts down on time to do things, whether working outside, hiking, horseback riding or doing something with the dogs. I would have been much better off, would have accomplished more, if my terminal leave had been in, say, April & May, or September & October.
* I’m getting tired of being hot, sweaty and dirty every day.
One thing I have done a lot of, especially this past month, is get a lot of yard work done: weeding, planting and spreading mulch all around the house. Still have a few things I want to do, a couple beds that need more work, but for the first time since we moved here, the beds around the house look good. But this has meant days spending 2, 4, 6 or more hours out in the yard, doing activities where you’re getting not just hot & sweaty, but dirty, too. Take the mulch, for example. I bought a few bags at Home Depot for a couple small areas; no big deal there. But for the big beds, and for around the trees and the clear area all around the house and the deck, I borrowed my neighbors trailer, and went to a local nursery to get bulk mulch (much, much cheaper than buying bags): on two separate days I filled the trailer with 40 cubic yards of mulch (that’s a lot of mulch!). Each time, it took me all of the next day to fork mulch into a wheelbarrow, push the wheelbarrow to wherever in the yard, empty it, spread the mulch, and then go back for the next load.
And, then, a couple weeks ago, we lost the tree (a big Bradford Pear tree) at the end of the driveway. One morning, after a normal Summer storm, a large section in the center of the tree came down. Fortunately it fell toward the street, not the driveway, though as near as we can figure, it fell after Amb Bob had left for work, or it would have landed on top of his truck. I spent a couple hours that morning using a hand saw to cut off branches into manageable sections that I could then drag around to the back corner of our lot, where there is bare dirt between a line of pine trees and a maple. My thoughts at the time being that between our chainsaw and a neighbor’s chipper, we could cut it all up into firewood, kindling and woodchip mulch; and I wanted to get it off the grass as quickly as possible, not to mention clearing the street. Luckily, too, our landscapers came that morning, and one of the guys used our chainsaw to cut off the stuff that was too big for me to get with a hand saw (I’ve never used a chainsaw, and didn’t think trying it unsupervised the first time would be a good idea). This was also one of the days that I had to empty the trailer of mulch, so I was outside working from about 0930 to almost 2000 (9:30am to 8pm for you non-military types), and most of the time covered in twigs, sawdust and mulch. Less that a week later, during a severe thunderstorm, half the tree came down. This time I knew we were going to have to call in tree specialists, so all I did that morning was cut off and move to the side those branches that were in the road. The tree guys came a couple days later and cut down the tree (removing it, by throwing pieces into there big chipper truck) and ground down the stump. But they also left us a bunch of logs and stump sections, for firewood. [They also, incidentally and accidentally, broke one of the windows in one of our garage doors, when the stump grinder threw a stone. That’s going to take a couple hundred and a few weeks to get fixed.] We had asked for this, but they left them piled willy-nilly on the grass, and I spent a couple hours that evening (a week ago Friday) loading logs into the wheelbarrow and moving them to where we’re stacking firewood, and then raking up as much sawdust, leaves, and twigs as I could (to minimize how much grass we’re going to lose in that area). Some stumps were too big for me to move on my own, and some logs needed to be cut down to firewood size yet. Those I left in place until last Sunday morning, when Amb Bob and I moved them together. And all those long, large branches that I had drug around to the back yard the week before, I had to drag back to the front and pile in the parking area of the driveway. The tree guys couldn’t get their big chipper truck back there (originally they had said they could), but they said that if we brought all the stuff back to front yard, they would come by one day this week and remove it. With the two of us working, it took less than two hours, and since a front came through that past Saturday night, that Sunday morning was not relatively hot & humid, and it was overcast, but still it was hot & sweaty & dirty work.
On the one hand, despite being a little disgruntled and tired of being hot, sweaty & dirty all the time, sometimes I’ve felt good about it all, too, because while I’m overweight and out-of-shape, life in the Army has left me no stranger to hard work, and I’ve gotten a lot done. [And have I lost any weight with all this work? You’d think so, since I’m not sitting on my butt in a car and behind a computer all day anymore, but no such luck. Haven’t lost a single pound.]
One other thing – I’ve been going through bras and underwear like crazy, often two pairs a day, which means more laundry. I’m thinking of buying more this week. Especially since I still have outside hot & sweaty work to do: more planting, maintenance-level weeding, and cleaning out & organizing the garages.
* I also would have accomplished more this Summer if I were a morning person.
This is not at all a revelation. It’s been interesting, but not unexpected at all, to watch as my natural diurnal rhythm has asserted itself to staying up until somewhere between midnight and 2 am, and not getting up until 8-9am. On at least three occasions I’ve stayed up reading until after 4am – and on two of those, the only reason I finally turned off the light was not because I was tired, but because I didn’t want to still be up reading when Amb Bob got up for work (a little after 4:30am).
Not really a problem, except for a couple things. First, if I was a morning person like Amb Bob, and was up at 0630 or 0700, then by the time I took the dogs out, fed them, had breakfast, and had a leisurely morning, it would still
be morning, and not too hot outside, and I would still have most of the day ahead of me to do things. But when you don’t get up until 0900, and take your time having a nice morning waking up slowly, and goofing around on the computer or watching tv or reading, all of a sudden it will be noon or later and the day will seem half over. And on the really hot summer days, it’s too hot to me to do things outside. If I treated, say, 6pm as the same as 3pm used to be, or 8pm as the same as 5 pm, this would matter so much. But I don’t – I don’t use those extra evening hours productively. Instead, I’m usually down on the couch all evening with Amb Bob, watching television and reading, until I finally decide to go to bed (he’ll have gone to bed by 9:30/10:00pm). Now I have done a few things well into the evening, especially when he’s been out of town (and he’s about to leave for 2-1/2 weeks), but I really do need to get better at it, to do at least “inside” work in the evenings in the limited time I left, or start getting up earlier (hah!
Fat chance…).
