The Minnesota Farm Woman

It is both a blessing and a curse to be a writer. The blessings come with being able to express yourself and in making people laugh…or cry. I choose the laughing end of the spectrum most of the time, at least I hope I do. We have spent the last few weeks doing some remodeling at our house. HE did the manly stuff such as tearing down, hauling supplies, and building up. With the amount of money and time that it took, you would think we were building a castle fit for the Queen of England instead of remodeling our laundry room. The painting was up to me. Not that he can’t paint, but HE CAN’T PAINT. At least not to my specifications, so I do all the painting around here, mostly because I’m too cheap to hire someone. Did I tell you how much I hate to paint? I would rather do just about anything else except clean out the chicken coop. One would think that using two gallons of boring white primer on both the walls and the ceilings would be kind of like having a blank slate in which a writer could come up with new and exciting ideas. I had plenty of ideas, but none that ended up more than a few sentences. When I switched to the two lovely shades of green, one would think that a writer could come up with colorful and cheerful stories that would make people laugh. Nope. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It’s not that I couldn’t write, but I COULDN’T WRITE. I was almost desperate enough to ask HIM to take over the painting. This writing stuff kind of happens like magic for me. I may start writing about one subject, and another might pop into my head and my fingers start flying across the keyboard. I hate to describe it like voices in my head, but it is kind of like that. Each story usually only takes about 30 minutes to write but two hours to edit…and edit…and edit again. I finally give up on editing and nervously hit the “publish” button, certain that it is all wrong. Then, I always find a mistake. Always. It is kind of like finding those drips and splotches in my newly painted room. The place and time for writing have to be just right, also. A Sunday afternoon, computer in my lap, Chihuahua vying for lap space, and the TV on, but only for background noise. Happy thoughts, and certainly nothing hateful like painting on my mind. So there you have it. An explanation for all the “reruns” you have endured this summer. I thought I would squeeze this story in before I start my next project: Painting the house. The entire house. On a ladder. Did I tell you how much I hate to paint? It’s during times like these that I wish the painting would happen like magic. Either that, or for a few days, I wish I were the Queen of England.

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Our little house has five doors leading to the outside. That’s five doors for my OCD self to check every night to make sure they are locked. When HE is out of town, I check and double-check each door. We just replaced three of those doors, and by WE I mean HIM, with a little help from his friends. Living in a construction zone is hard, and I won’t even bore you with more complaints about not having a washing machine. There is the noise. There is the dust. There is Barney the Chihuahua who barks at everything, tries constantly to slip out the door(s) to see what’s going on and in my opinion, sure to meet certain death from an eagle snatching him up or crushed by falling sheet rock. He also still has to be taken outside to do his business, on a leash, of course, and through a maze of construction materials and demolition trash. In the winter, our county road is fairly quiet, but in the summer, the traffic increases due to fishing, resorts, and campers. This morning was no exception, even at six a.m., as Barney and I stepped outside for a brief morning stroll. We usually do this unobtrusively, out the back door, but right now, there are no back steps. If you drove past my house and happened to notice a woman dressed in yoga pants with uncombed hair and a neon green tee-shirt two sizes too big which read “Minnesota: Gone Loony”, it was not a burglar, an escapee from a psychiatric facility, or a lost tourist. It was just me, a Farm Woman who realized a millisecond too late that she accidentally hit the lock button on the new front door. Even more frightening, and I am perhaps giving a little too much information here, but that outfit, or a similar one, is what I sleep in every night. Now, if you knew how hard HE has been working on this project, you would understand just why I didn’t want to wake him up at that hour by pounding on the door. The door to the dining room was locked securely, of course. I could have walked around to the side of the house to the French doors that lead into our bedroom, but there are no steps built yet and only the skeleton of a new deck, so I couldn’t even get close. Besides, that door would be locked up tighter than Fort Knox because I checked it before going to bed last night. Thankful that I was wearing slippers and even more thankful that it wasn’t January, I walked around to the back door as a last resort, almost forgetting that those steps are gone and the door is three feet off the ground. I was amazed to find that door unlocked, thankful and yet wondering if I had forgotten to check it in my nightly security rounds. I managed to crawl inside and into the construction zone with no injury except to my pride and none the worse for wear except a little dust on my backside. There is one thing I happened to notice, though. Each door now has two locks, so now I have TEN locks to check every night. I think I have finally succeeded in driving myself loony. It’s a good thing I already have the tee-shirt.

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