Down The Rabbit Hole

As I was sweeping cabins earlier today,  I got to thinking, "Good-night, M, if you don't post something on that silly blog of yours soon, they'll all suspect you've gone off the deep end".  They'll wonder if you've finally become a forest dwelling, ax-swinging nut with a propensity for off-roading in inappropriate vehicles and having long [audible] conversations with herself.

Phew.  Glad I've avoided that.

My brainchild occurred only a an hour or so after Helen, a new (and awesome) year-long staffer, pulled a mouse out of the washing machine.

And the thought came just a little while before my husband and two of our neighbors/co-workers/fellow woodsman went outside to try and shoot a skunk that is living in our woodpile.

A woodpile located directly below our front deck,

which also happens to sit right outside my office window.

Fine, the woodpile basically is my office window.

While the chase ensued, I tackled my own challenge: eating half of a watermelon.  This comes to no one's surprise.

Why is no one surprised?  Because eating entire melons and chasing woodland creatures is beginning to feel normal.  The strange-but-true reality of life here has slowly pulled a foggy haze over my perceptions of what to should expect out of a day.

For example, I've recently managed to:

• overflow the pot in the Bunn coffee maker, multiple - ok, dozens - of times.  
• shake someone's hand while holding a pirate's hook in my sleeve (we'd never met before)
• spray water all over the dish pit, ceiling included.  

         [Since we're on the subject, here's a brief life lesson:

    In the battle of human dishwasher vs. ladle, 

there are no winners - only losers.

It looks so harmless.

 

    I'd compare it to running an ultra-marathon naked, 

in Manitoba, 

in February

 or 

to drinking questionable milk]

I've also managed to...

• stay upright in a kayak through most of the Kennebec Gorge (read: most)
• drive a four-wheeler 
• pet a black bear.  It actually felt quite like my cat, only larger and less alive.
• plunge the single-most-foul toilet I've ever encountered.  If I close my eyes, I can still see it.
• shoot archery with a gaggle of sweet Dominican grandmothers.
• start wearing hats.  Thank you to my friend Cathy, state food service laws, and that one retreat guest who left me a fedora.  Her fedora.  On purpose.  I look too much like a little boy to pull it off [without looking like a little boy].
• stop sleeping in.  This seems simultaneously gluttonous and tragic, and yet I will probably attempt to return it to my skill set pronto.
• take one day off in a month.  Though it may sound like I'm flaunting some big accomplishment here, what I'm really saying is that this kind of behavior is particularly unadvisable and likely a result of your own bad planning.  Plan better next time. 
• live in a state of heightened anxiety and panic (see above).
• remain in wedded bliss weddedness.  Considering the previous truth, this is a miracle.  I'd have banished me.  

I keep thinking that I should maintain a list of the unique happenings that that take place here in the woods, and perhaps I really ought to, but as time goes on, the instances themselves become less and less unique and, consequently, more and more everyday.

In conclusion, I suppose I will start on that list...

providing something really weird happens.

That Stinks: Expanding Your Mind & Deflating Your Ego

People are smart.

It's also true that some people are pretty stupid.  In my opinion, these are people who ride three-wheeled contraptions and that guy who jumped off of the Eiffel Tower with a cape.  Come on, folks.  Nature wins, every time.

But otherwise, like I said, most people are smart.

I was thinking the other day about how it might be a clever thing to get a particular custom t-shirt made.  It would be chocolate brown, and on the chest it would read in gold letters: My name is M, and my poop smells.

source

You're probably laughing a little.
Or shocked.
Or praying for me.
I'll take 'em all.

What I'm trying to say is that on most days, I feel (and certainly behave) like I have the master copy of life's manual, My Way tucked into my back pants pocket.  You see, I know how to answer the phone the right way, cook an omelet the right way, drive a car the right way (HA), and even tell a story the right way.  I've got the instruction book that you desperately need.  In fact, I AM the instruction book, so listen up.

(If you don't know, I tell stories as well as a rat giving you directions to the interstate)

So I've got this rule book, my rule book, in one back pocket, and in the other, I've got a copy of another text, The Highway.  I'm sure you're following at this point.  My way.... the highway....

Bottom line: I am CRAZY.

I am crazy not to listen more, to learn more, to shut up more.  I am the girl who has walked into walls [in daylight] and talks more to her cat than to most people.  The woman who drives to the right town in the wrong state is certainly not a woman who should be giving any form of instruction, even omelet instruction.

I spent a bit of this week at a conference for industry professionals, and again I realized that... my poop smells.  Shocker.  Don't ask me how I ever manage to forget this - somehow I find a way.  I am young.  I am arrogant.  I am at the beginning of things.  I am NOT an expert.  I am just another girl, and need as much advice and help is my dense mind can possibly absorb.  Particularly in the area of common sense, in which I am desperately lagging.

Harry Truman said, The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

I shouldn't need a reminder for my insufficiency, but sometimes I do.  And there is no better reminder than smart people.

In conclusion, I'm 100% positive that I need to listen more, hear more, and humble myself more.

And here's an unrelated (your favorite kind, I'm sure) and free snip-it for you readers:

Refrain from keeping books in your back pockets.
No one likes a lumpy butt.