Warning label

I got cranky last night.  It seemed to come on kind of fast, but truthfully I had been working up to it all day.  I spent the day doing something that I do not like… house work.  The big cleaning, 409, rags, vacuums, cat liter scooper, trash taker outer, smashed fly picker upper, dust, cat hair… the works.  Old houses get dirty fast, and farm houses get even dirtier faster, but we couldn’t figure out why our old farm-house floors (yes, our beautiful, newly refurnished hardwood) got dirty so quickly.  ?? After all the teens take their shoes off outside on the kitchen porch (usually in an inconvenient spot where the rest of us trip over them) so it couldn’t be that they were tracking in much dirt, dry grass and farm bits.  I was just at the end of my vacuum hose when I saw them!  Two, not one, teenage boys running outside in their socks over the dry grass, across the dirt and back into the house.  Luckily for them, my loving spouse walked in and was immediately dispatched, “You deal with those darn (not really ‘darn’, but something like it) boys…” as I stomped off with my vacuum and rags.  It might have ended there but then I swept the kitchen porch and along with the dirt I swept the pile of shoes, socks and sandals out onto the lawn.  I knew I really needed a warning label, letting the teens know, that I was getting cranky, so I did pick up all the offending footwear and lined them up neatly out-of-the-way on the porch.  Then I warned all the teens, that I was getting cranky and to be careful.  I explained (fairly nicely) where to leave their footwear and patiently informed them that if it was left elsewhere, I would see if my arm and my aim were good enough to throw their item from the porch into the pond.  No one’s tried me yet, but the day is young.

Thankfully with some humor behind the repeated warnings to be careful because the Mother-ship was getting cranky, a yummy dinner and a gin, my mood lightened up.  It helped too that the evening was beautiful, the breeze was gentle, the teens were fed and my loving spouse and I went out to pound in a few fence posts.  Fence post pounding is not quite as therapeutic as tractor driving, but it is not bad.  The bonus of course is that we’ll soon be able to move the horses to an additional site for them to graze.

The task we’ve under taken, to restore the home and the farm is not a small one.  It cannot be done quickly.  Many, many parts are underway, but few are done and won’t be done for years possibly.  This is just the reality of the matter, but some days it is harder to see the progress through the mess and on those occasions a warning label for those around me would be good.