When the big hand is on the 10 and the little hand is on the 3…

This morning I did laundry and hung it out. Then I took care of the horses. I had to go to work at noon, so I had to be home to get ready by eleven. I checked the time after I hung up the laundry and–gulp–it was a quarter ’til!

I raced around, throwing things–a bale of hay, horse poop, some shavings, pitchforks, buckets, feed, etc. “Sorry boys, it’s got to be a swipe and a promise today.” I checked the stall doors one last time and ran. A quarter after…yikes!

I was halfway out the driveway before I realized it was a quarter after TEN, not eleven! So I had plenty of time for a leisurely shower and lunch, iron my clothes, pack my supper, la la la….

I usually enjoy hanging up laundry. I love the smell of clean, sunshiny clothes. I find hanging laundry out to be one of the most relaxing things. Maybe I’m weird, I don’t know. When I hang out clothes, they have to be neat and in order of size and kind. I learned how to hang out laundry from my mother, who learned from her mother, etc. I like to think that how I hang out laundry is just like how a woman years and years ago used to hang out her laundry, teaching her daughter as she went: now be sure to hang the big stuff first, and then the medium things; it just looks better that way; don’t you just love how the sheets smell after absorbing all that sunshine?

I meant to do that!

When I was four years old and my dad was building our new house, I rode my tricycle backwards off the floor into the footers. I was zooming around on that little red trike, and all of a sudden…boom…I was in the hole. I looked up, tears in my eyes, and saw my uncle looking down at me in a panic.

I jumped up and said “I meant to do that!”

Good grief, one foot to the right or left and I’d have been impaled on a rebar, and all I cared about was my hurt pride. I could never stand to be embarassed or to have things out of my control. Which is ok, except it’s hard to do a lot of things if you have to be in control all of the time.

This is probably part of my problem with public speaking. I get nervous and my tongue starts doing stupid things, and then I get embarassed and frustrated and it all spirals downward. I start to stutter and trip over words, and then they all get stuck in my mouth instead of coming out, and I turn into a great blithering idiot.

I think that my garden has been great for teaching me how to not be in control of everything. I have only been gardening for five years and it has been extremely humbling. I often have no idea what I am doing and I do all the wrong things–like allowing ragweed to grow up all over the place because I thought it looked like tomatoes.

What I have learned from my garden is to tell myself “no one is looking, let it be and see where it all goes.”

It’s not easy.

Sometimes you have to let things alone for a while until you can identify which green shoots are carrots and which are weeds. When the green things all come up in a row, it’s a good guess that they’re the ones you planted. But this is me, and I don’t always get the seeds in a neat row–I get impatient and start sticking them in every which way.

So now when I look at my garden and see the crooked lines of plants coming up helter-skelter I just say “I meant to do that!”

 

Spring, when the graduates emerge

It’s that time of year when graduates bloom into the real world. Everyone is happy; the commencement speakers encourage the graduates to “go out there and change the world and enjoy life while you’re doing it, and above all, appreciate your education.”

It’s been twelve years since I graduated college; eight since I left grad school. I’m still working to pay back loans. I don’t regret my education one bit. But I do think it was a teensy bit overpriced.

And that first year out of college was not the best time of my life. I was unemployed, unsure of what I wanted, and unprepared for the real world. I floundered around for a year and a half.

I applied for graduate school, but I wasn’t clear about what I wanted and I didn’t really understand the whole process, so I was rejected by the one school I applied to. Then I got a job at a temporary employment agency. That was where I discovered I did not want to work at a job that required a hairnet. I hated the noise of the factories too–it made me feel very claustrophobic, unable to get away from the constant roar of machinery. Ugh. The only aspect of that job that made it bearable was the fact that every position was only temporary. I think I would explode if I thought that was my job forever.

The second summer after I graduated college was when I finally got things together. I did a lot of research and mulling things over. I discovered that I wanted to do public history, which means anything connected to history other than teach (which is what everyone immediately thinks of when you say you’re getting a degree in history.) I was thinking living history, museums, maybe archives.

Then I applied to three different graduate programs.

And I applied for a position as a page at the library. I had to do some fast talking to convince the boss that I was a good investment. Since grad school was still pending, she wasn’t sure how long I would stay around. Of course, if I got accepted to a school, I would go there, but I promised her that in the meantime I would be the best damn page ever.

I didn’t get the job.

I applied for a full-time temporary position at the hardware store. It was around Halloween, so I spent several weeks stocking Christmas items. It was horrible.

Then the library called. Another position opened up, and would I like it? Long story short–I became the best damn page they ever had.

But I was accepted by all three schools I applied to. I was offered a research assistantship, I visited campus and met some people, and the deal was done.

 

Defining myself

I was struggling to think of something to put on my “About Me” page here. I want to think of something funky and esoteric, yet apt. It can be so hard to describe yourself! I don’t want to describe myself just in terms of what I do: I work at a library, I read a lot, I like to garden, I am married, I write poetry, etc.

Not that all of that isn’t part of who I am. It shapes me and is a reflection of me. But it isn’t me.

I am the girl who starts sentences with conjunctions. It’s not that I don’t know grammar…believe me, I know grammar! I just like to start sentences with conjunctions; I like to jump into things in media res.

I would say that my defining trait is intellectual curiosity. I am constantly learning, observing, questioning, and thinking. In a different time I might be called a bluestocking. I prefer to consider myself a Renaissance Girl–sort of like Thomas Jefferson except I support my cerebral life by working at a library instead of by farming with slaves and being President.

I am an introvert: I like to be in my own company. I am a contrary: I have to do things against the grain. I think in dialogue: there are usually two voices sorting the thoughts through my head.

As they say, “nothing is normal here.”

In the beginning

Like I said before, I’d been thinking of trying one of these blogs as a way to sort of “publish” my musings, but I never could think of a really cool name for a blog. But this past weekend I was working away in my garden–digging, hoeing, forking, shoveling composted horse manure–and it came to me. I’m always doing weird, contrary things, and I thought “this is not how most people live.” And then I thought “Nothing is normal here.”

And that was it! I thought if I were to write about all the random stuff that goes on in my life, it would all fit nicely under the umbrella “Nothing is normal here.”

And where is “here?” Most of my life is contained between my 15 acre farm where my horses live and my job at the library. I rarely travel outside of the mid-Ohio county where I live, except for the times I jaunt across the ocean for extended stays in faraway countries. In high school I was an exchange student in Scotland, and in college I spent a semester studying in Ireland–but that was in the 90s and is now ancient history.

My boys take up most of my attention now. Buddy is an 18 year old Tennessee Walking Horse who has been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which creates all kinds of challenges. Utah is a mustang, a bossy little guy with a heart of gold. Utah’s motto is “if I feel like it,” while Buddy’s motto varies from “will there be food?” to “do I have to move to get there?”

I could write more, but there’s plenty of time and I don’t want to be one of those people who get stuck to their computers and have to be surgically removed.