"Yes, It's A Mess, But It's MY Mess!"

Like most of the creative people I grew up around, I'm a bit of a slob. I cheerfully admit this on my Facebook page with memes like "My house looks like I'm losing a game of Jumanji!" and "My housework style can best be described as 'There appears to have been a struggle...' "....

But ask me where something is, and I will often be able to go to a specific place in the mess and pull out whatever you asked me for. The system appears to be total chaos, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I remember exactly where I last saw something.....

Unless someone else in the house has moved it in an effort to "clean up" for me.....

And since we're all different people, they put the item where they feel it logically belongs, such as a packet of clothesline that I purchased in the spring, while I was out of work after a surgery. The intent was that I would bring in the metal clothes line support from outside my kitchen window, take off all the blackened clothesline that it came with many, many, MANY moons ago, and then re-string it with the new line.

In April, however, the metal pole was solidly frozen into the cement block that supports it, so I set the clothesline on the table until the ground thawed - and have never made it back to that project, as it's been so cold and wet, I haven't wanted to hang clothes on that line. The clothesline packet has been sitting silently on a corner of the kitchen work table, reminding me that it must happen, but other, more pressing duties have been getting done first.

Then, this past week, when I discovered that a slightly musty smell in the corner of the front room was an Australian Outback coat that was put there dry, but has gotten moldy because of all the humidity, I discovered that my other clothesline, on the front porch, had dry rotted. I've decided that the line I've been mostly using because it's at least under a roof needs to be replaced. The clothesline on the table will no longer mock me because it will be in use, holding things like a heavy oilskin coat (which is cleaned by a vinegar and water solution and a stiff brush followed by hosing it down, making the one article of clothing weigh almost as much as yours truly) so they can dry without shrinking in the dryer.

I started looking for the clothesline almost two hours ago, as it was no longer on the corner of the table. Either someone else has decided to "clean", or I, in a story-induced daze, have moved it to another "logical" location. I naturally start with looking around the various things in the kitchen, through piles of important mail, stacked according to which family member they belong to, then look in all the places I would have moved it to if I was thinking about the current works in progress (as there is always more than one).

No luck.

Next, I try to think about the other members and where they may have moved a roll of clothesline. None of the more logical spots yield the clothesline, and I'm soon back at the table, looking at the spot it was all summer, recently scrubbed clean by a helpful hand....

My eyes travel around the kitchen, and as I text the only family member currently awake, I'm opening drawers and cabinets, just systematically looking EVERYWHERE. The hubby has seen the clothesline on the table and heard my jokes about "finding the time", but didn't move it. By now, I've moved on into other rooms, and on a whim, open a tub with our camping gear still in it that has been left in the front room until camping season is done for the summer. Someone must have thought the clothesline was for taking camping, even though we have enough camping rope to hog tie a whole football team, as there it is!

I check to find that my whole "grab the clothesline and re-string the front porch" scheme has used up an hour and 45 minutes of my day. The laundty that I started, wanting to hang it on the clothesline, is sitting in the washer, done its cleaning cycle some time ago, mocking me.....

And, as I walk back into the kitchen and survey the mess I made searching for the clothesline, I pray that I don't die before I get this straightened out, because I'm hearing a familiar line from a lot of crime dramas on television....

"They ransacked the place!"

Feeling like time is slipping away......

As September 11th hit this year, I was feeling very upset, as it feels like it was just yesterday that I was coming home from a hernia surgery in April. I still am having twinges as I try to work the stomach muscles, still finding weak spots that I need to work a little slower, but tomorrow makes 5 full months since that surgery....

And then, while watching the news and trying not to get drawn back into the fear and anger that the media still keeps trying to make us feel 14 years after the attack on the U.S. and the fall of the Twin Towers in New York, there's a weather report that states that some parts of New England, including the southern Maine section where I live, is in drought condition...

"What?" I say aloud - and realize that I sound like the minion that my 3-year-old granddaughter is becoming adept at imitating. (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's the clip: https://youtu.be/MfylJy_nMbM )

Most of the summer, I haven't gone out for my normal "sunrise paddles" because it's been cold and rainy. We normally have our air conditioners in the windows by mid-June, but with very few exceptions, we were quite comfortable with just running fans at night and shutting them off shortly after sunrise, keeping the inside of the house at a quite comfortable 65-69 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about where we try to keep it when the air conditioners are in and running. Most days when I've come home from work, my daughter has been wrapped in a blanket complaining of the cold, when she would normally be asking if I could take her down to a friend's camp down the road for a swim after work because, even with the a/c, it's still too hot inside to be comfortable.

The one and only day that I actually got into my bathing suit this year to take my daughter and the dog for a swim, which was actually just a couple of days ago, the water was still very cold in the little cove that is normally as warm as bath water on a hot day, making it necessary to swim out to our friend's float to dive into the deeper water in order to cool off. Needless to say, with back damage that makes my left leg go numb and stop working if the water is too cold, I didn't even fully immerse myself even on that one very warm afternoon.

So how in the devil did we get "abnormally dry" in what I've been calling "the summer that never was"? We've had more flood wanings than we've ever had this summer, and more severe thunderstorms than normal, making several tornadoes appear - something that I never heard of happening much in Maine when I was growing up. (This web site http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/metorn.htm notes the tornadoes that DID happen in Maine, but it was a very rare occurance from the 1960's, when I was born, and has been happening with more and more frequency in recent years......)

"So, what did you do with your summer?" I was asked yesterday by a friend who happened to be shopping at the Staples where I work.

I poppped off with "I worked all summer", but after she left, I started seriously thinking about it. Where did all the time go that I would have normally spent in taking my family swimming, camping and on picnics? Looking out the window at my very overgrown garden, which I'll have to seriously hustle to get cleaned up for winter due to all the rain, it's readily obvious where I DIDN'T spend any time, but what did I honestly do?

I've spent a few days doing what I call "bugging out" with Dee Jae, finding barns and silos with her that can be used to make up part of the cover for the Northern Bard Publications edition of "Night of the Tiger", since Selene has informed us many times that the book sales haven't been great enough for us to think about hiring another model. (Dee Jae has had the idea that she can photoshop a front cover showing a run down city street with a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle on the sidewalk and a sign over it reading "BoxCars" to represent the place where Kyle meets the Lady Tigre and, for the back cover, she can photoshop the photos we've taken this summer to "build" the barn house where the tiger woman finds safety for a while.)

I've spent a little time organizing things inside the house and editing "Night of the Tiger" to take out the glaring errors - including a paragraph in Chapter Eighteen that was changed by the editors at Write Words Inc. that changes what I consider to be the pivotal part of the whole story into something I keep getting emailed by fans who are making that same minion "What" noise about because it makes absolutely no sense that my hero, who has discovered a secret that the woman he loves has been carefully hiding for seven years, answers his own question.

And what else have I done?

Just as I told my friend, I've been at work. In one way, all the extra hours have been nice, because my husband drops to a "regular" work week of 40 hours over the summer, so many years, we would be struggling to make ends meet, but this year, we've actually had a little extra money for such things as the wonderful "Anniversary Week" that I wrote about in an earlier blog post.

But I still feel like I didn't get a summer to enjoy.

Oh well, I guess I shouldn't be grumpy about it, because this means my favorite holiday, Halloween, is right around the corner. I just hope Mother Nature has had enough fun drowning my flower garden, most of which grew mold instead of flowers, so that I can take the next couple of weeks of days off to pull all the weeds and plant a few more bulbs before the ground starts to freeze. It's looking very hopeful for this Tuesday and Thursday so far....as long as the weather report I saw about "drought" is otherwise accurate.

Goodbye Summer of 2015! May the summer of 2016 see me putting air conditioners into my windows again and having the dry days to work in the flower garden so that, at this time next year, I'll see the last summer blooms instead of the weeds of neglect when I go down the path to my driveway.