A Mere Bubble Off

A Mere Bubble Off

I have grass in my bed. No, not the smoking kind—the other kind. The kind that’s supposed to be green when the snow melts, not beige. That’s beige, or ecru if you prefer, as in dead grass, which goes a long way towards explaining WHY it’s in my bed, but not HOW it came to be there.

When I finally staggered to the bedroom this morning (it was 1 a.m.) and pulled back the covers, there they were—tiny bits of dead grass on the pillow and red flannel sheets. Yes, I pulled back the covers myself. There’s no maid around this resort to do it for me. I’m home and back in the real world now.

The real world is where your lawn is brown in the spring, not green. The real world is where you turn down the bedcovers yourself. The real world is where fixing your own meals involves actual work, not lining up before a grand buffet of everything imaginable and all ready-to-eat, not to mention the heavenly feeling of leaving the dirty dishes on the table for someone else to clean up. Sometimes, the real world sucks big time.

I’ve been home for only two days and for most of those two days I’ve been shaving my dead lawns with my John Deere riding mower set to the closest cut it can make. First, I shave. Then I connect the bagging attachment and pick up the cut grass. I must stop quite often to empty the two huge bags of the clippings and leaves. The violet-green swallows are loving it, hauling off all they can for their nests. However, it would take a few billion swallows to get it all, so it’s up to me to clean it up. That’s my theory of lawn care: shave it, feed it, water it, and watch it come in green in a few days. It seems to work.

But, how did the dead grass get in my bed? I took a shower that first night. Didn’t I? I seem to recall a shower. I know I took one tonight, because after shaving and fertilizing and watering more lawns, I went litter-picking for two hours. When I got home I stripped to the skin in the garage laundry room, threw all my clothes in the washer, and stumbled upstairs to the shower. I’m not allowed in my house with my litter-picking clothes because of the glacial silt. The highway guys sprinkle sand liberally over the icy highways in winter, and that sand is mostly glacial silt. In the spring, the silt covers everything in the roadside ditches. I take a lot of it home with me. In fact, if I could rescue that silt from my plumbing drains, I probably could build my own glacial moraine.

After my shower, it was time for my reward for being a good girl and working so hard all day. My reward is sitting at the computer and taking dictation from my muse. Right now she is absorbed in the Aussie Journals, her interpretation of our just-completed trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. I wish I could get her to write chronologically. No, she dictates in her own fashion, so right now we have Chapters 1, 2, 3, 98 and 99.

I had to designate those chapters 98 and 99 though I have no idea what they will eventually wind up being. I only know there will be chapters before them. I used 98 and 99 because Windows XP refuses to accept a question mark in a file name.
Anyway, I spent almost three hours with the muse and the computer tonight while I ate dinner—chicken salad on whole wheat crackers, blueberries and frozen grapes—all from Costco. Oh, and mugs of ice water–from my well.

Pablo the parrot doesn’t like me eating dinner in front of the computer. He’d much rather I ate my meals downstairs and shared with him. Usually when I work in the loft, I bring him up and he sits and sleeps contentedly on the back of a chair as I type. Right now, though, Pablo the parrot is perfectly pissed. I am being punished mightily for being gone almost a month. So, Pablo remains in his cage until I am certain I will escape bodily harm.

In the meantime, I have to change the sheets on the bed. Flannel doesn’t cut it in summer. But when? Right after arising from bed won’t do. I make the bed before going downstairs, otherwise it won’t get made all day, and who would go back and strip an already made bed? That borders on stupidity, and doubles the housework. Downstairs it’s time for a cup of Constant Comment tea and scanning the newspaper, then a quick breakfast. After that, I check e-mail, make a few revisions to the day’s previously written words that I’d proofread in bed the night before, as I wait for the caffeine to wake up the ol’ bod. Then it’s chore time.

If I’m still not awake, I drive into Moose Pass to the post office. I’m waiting for the didgeridoo to arrive from Alice Springs, Australia. Anxiously awaiting.

Then I work outside all day and a good part of the evening. I’ve a lot of catching up to do as I’ve been gone all of the month of May that’s already passed. I have to finish the lawn job, stain decks, plants flowers, get all the rest of the lawn care equipment out of winter storage, figure out how to start the Suzuki four-wheeler, and clean up litter from thirty miles of highway ditches before the weeds get too high to see the litter.

So, when to change the sheets? Right before bedtime is impossible, because I’m lucky if, after my daytime activities, I can make it to the second level of the house where the bed is, much less change the sheets. Today is a perfect example. My body complained so much last night after litter-picking, I took two Advil PM before going to my grassy bed.

Now, though the spirit is willing, the body isn’t. My mind is running as slowly as my DSL connection, which today seems slower than dial-up ever was. Maybe I’ll change the sheets on the next rainy day when I can’t work outside. I thought about sleeping on the other side of the king-sized bed, the side that should be dead-grass-free, but then I considered the effect that might have on a brain that seems a bubble off anyway.

It’s got to be the Advil PM, and the dust from the dead grass and the silt from the highways clogging my sinuses. I absolutely refuse to blame all this on jet lag.

May 28, 2008
Gullible