Iced Tea Chat: Come Rain or Come Shine

 

Hello dears.   Let's have a glass of iced tea and sit a spell.   July is meant for sitting and chatting and sipping tall icy drinks.  I'll provide you with a fan just in case the breeze drops and gnats want to be a pest but gnats are not such pests this year. The flies are the pesters this year.  The flies pester because some of them are biters.      

And here's a tip you might want to try.   JD told me that when on coast guard ships they used spray bottles with pine oil cleaner in them to keep flies at bay.  I can say assuredly that when I tried this last week with a diluted spray (half and half), I had fewer flies hanging about.   Bonus for me was that the porch smelled absolutely lovely, since I love the pine oil scent but Maddie wasn't half so keen.  Since Maddie smells anyway, I wasn't sorry that it kept Maddie at a distance.  Double bonus, lol.

I'm beginning to think that gnats and flies are cyclical insects like cicadas.

Speaking of cicadas, there's the odd one here and there this year, but nowhere near what there are some years when you can't HEAR your own thoughts because the cicadas are making so much of their particular noise.  The gnats are about in lesser degree this year as well, but the few we have are just as irritating as hundreds  because they seem to be drawn to ears, eyes and noses most especially. 

When I had the boys here a few weeks ago, we had Shabat.   Isaac asked afterwards if he might have a drink of water.  I said certainly and got his Ninja Turtle cup, not a sippy cup, but one with a lid and spout.  "No, Gamma, I want to use the glasses..." and he ran to the Shabat table to pick up one of the sherry glasses that we use for communion.   I said "Of course!" He and Josh both enjoyed drinking from those little glasses.

I thought about that after they left.  I pick up pretty sherry glasses at thrift stores here and there for nothing.  I mean 10c-50c a glass at most.   And if they enjoy drinking from them why not let them use them?  Even if Isaac is prone to spilling an open cup, a sherry glass doesn't hold enough liquid to do damage anywhere...  I made up my mind that I'd look for more.  

Well last Friday night as I was about to clear the table, I dropped one of my glasses and shattered it.   It's just further incentive to do that shopping for new sherry glasses.  And while I hate to break anything, I was glad I had good reason to use that pretty glass for so long a time (about ten years now I think) and that I'd said "Yes of course," when Isaac asked to use it.   How much better to break something knowing it was used and loved than to have saved it and dropped it while merely moving it to clean.   That's my philosophy.

I'm also toying with an idea.  I've tried to make it a point to get Josh here for supper before school begins.  I'd like to get both boys this time, because Isaac starts school this year as well.   I think I'm going to serve them supper on china plates with sherry glasses to drink from and candles burning.   It would be  special to them I think.   The food might be simple but they'll remember the setting more than the food, I'll bet. 

I told you I'd give you a fan to use if the gnats were bad or the breeze died down.  I love the popsicle stick and cardboard fans.  In my childhood, in the old church I attended, we had a plethora of 'Funeral Parlor' fans.   These often depicted children in church looking beatific or guardian angels looking over a child near a cliff and that sort of thing.  On the back were ads and phone numbers for local businesses, mostly for wells and hardware stores.  They were called Funeral Parlor fans because the most prominent ad on the back was always for the local funeral homes and they were passed out by those businesses to churches to use.   

Our church didn't have air conditioning.  It was just a huge rectangular building with windows perfectly lined up to allow for cross ventilation and while I do recall it being hot, it was never unbearable.  Later on in my youth, Daddy bought window fans and set up in a window here or there and later a window AC unit.  Honestly I can't say those things were improvements.  They were noisy and no one could hear the preacher over them even though these preachers weren't shy about raising their voices.  It was also unwelcome because most of the little old ladies, who all lived without AC anyway, complained that it was too cold.    For myself, I preferred the relief the occasional cooling breeze through the windows brought and adored hearing birds sing in quiet spaces between the preacher's sentences if there was a space.  I liked looking out the windows watching the breeze riffle through the wheat or corn or listening to the lowing of cattle let loose to eat out the fields.   And I enjoyed the fans with their pictures and ads...But that was me.    I have one or two of the vintage fans but they are flimsy and I can't use them as I used to do.   So the fans that aren't as pretty must suffice, mostly fans we picked up at fairs or while on vacation.   

Granny also kept fans at her house but she was not above breaking down a cereal box and making her own handheld fan which worked as well as the fans if they were a bit more awkward.   The main thing was to have something we might keep gnats away with and it worked.

I was going to start this Chat the other day but I woke in a foul mood.  I did indeed!  I had been dreading morning, to be honest with you, because I knew just what the day would bring, more of the same thing we've had day in and day out of late: we'd work, we'd get overheated, we'd shower, fall into our chairs, scarcely speak and go to bed.  Ugh!  I wanted to DO things, something, anything except the usual.   But most of all I wanted to SLEEP, because I had a run of poor nights as I do and that particular morning I woke about 3am (it's a thing lately) and lay there staring at the walls.    Well.   John's brother called and it was barely 7am.   He had an appointment that morning (he lives in Texas) and decided it was a good time to talk to John, not thinking at all of the 2 hour time difference and he was shocked that we were still asleep.  It amazes me how many people ask us, at 7am, "Oh!  Did I wake you?"  Why is that such an unbelievable thing.  And it amuses me much because most of those who ask that are generally the sort who sleep until 10ish in the morning before they even consider letting an eyelid flutter. 

I got up and went off to the kitchen to have first coffee all alone without speaking because one blessing of having brother in law call at that hour is that no conversation between he and John is short.  I was assured of quiet coffee time and that much I'd at least wrench from the disappointment of morning.

My mood did not improve.  No, not at all.  I wanted this and I wanted that and I wanted more and I wanted different.   My stinking attitude drove me out to the yard after breakfast where I took vengeance on the copious weeds in the corner bed.   It rained heavily yesterday afternoon so it was a satisfying time to pull up weeds as great clumps came up easily.   John came out to ask if I needed my gloves and I said "No!" in such a vehement manner that I felt ashamed of myself and said in a more appropriate tone of voice, "These weeds are coming up so easily I don't really need to tug..."  "Is there anything you need?"  "Weed mat, mulch, all that sort of stuff but there's no money for it and none to be had any time soon so..."   That previously softened answer being replaced yet again by that sharp disappointed tone I'd kept up all morning.  Ugh.

I do tire of myself at times.  Very much a morning of what Joyce Meyer used to refer to as "Stinking Thinking".  Nothing we had was enough.  Nothing we could do would have been enough.  I WANTED....and yet the truth is, I didn't NEED.

I mean, seriously, I thought of my Grandmothers and great-grandmothers who had beautiful yards and gardens and it was all good hard labor and kindness that made them.  They didn't purchase flowers or seeds or plants.  They accepted cuttings and pass along plants and some things were gifts (it was acceptable to have bought plants if someone else had given them to you).   They didn't have weed mat and mulch.  They had two hands and strong backs and legs and they USED them.  Their flower beds and gardens were weed free and nothing but dirt showed in them.   Goodness gracious!  What a spoiled woman I am and what a spoil sport, too!

Well I didn't get my mood right anytime shortly but I worked, which I often find is usually some sort of help in getting my equilibrium back.  Then I sat down to have a glass of iced tea and cool off.  Oh but that stinking thinking persisted.  It did.  

John had gone out to work at things himself and he came back from his last task ready for a cool drink. I took him one out to the porch and we talked a few minutes. I said "Let's do something tomorrow..."  "Well what?"  "I don't know..."  "Well you decide..."  That never works.  It truly never does and to prove my point, I came up with something and he said "Nooooo...." and I offered up another suggestion and he said "No, definitely don't want to do that."    I actually was out of my previous ugly mood and laughed at him and said "Well that was MY shot and as usual you don't want to...so what DO you want to do?"   After he waffled on a bit about not wanting to do this and not wanting to do that and rejecting  ideas, I almost got snarky and went right back to my previous mood, but I said "Never mind.  I told Katie I might do something for her tomorrow and I guess I can just go do that and we'll skip it.   We'll likely have children here over the weekend and I can use the day to get ahead for the weekend."   

He wasn't happy about that but I was out of ideas and tired of having the few I'd had  shut down.  I explained myself further,  "You see, most of what we do any more is errands and if you're in the mood we might get something to eat while we're out or not and you like that as a day out...But I have no errands to run and don't have funds just yet to buy random stuff or even what's needed to complete other tasks just now, but we do have enough to go do something inexpensive,  so I thought we might just have a day out of the house.   But I haven't forgotten that we were just out July 4th, so we can skip doing anything more this week."

Yes, that was my attitude then.  I decided to give myself a whole day off Friday and I started listening to vloggers (mostly frugal, cooking, cleaning types of vlogs are my choice) and somehow my mind clicked into things I have on hand and could use to make meals or do or tasks that needed doing that truly require nothing but elbow grease (got plenty of that!), and suddenly that stinking thinking was gone.  I started thinking of things we did have and seeing the abundance of it all, and I thought of my grandmothers' yards and how they made do and somehow everything righted itself once more and I was myself once again.  

I wish I could tell you it lasted.  I asked John in a half hearted way Friday morning if he wanted to go do anything and he got a bit snippy but then, when I'd gone on my way quietly without saying a word and settled in to do something else, he came along showered and dressed and ready to go and I wasn't at all ready.  I'd worked at that task I'd wanted to do with Katie which frustratingly couldn't be done at all.  That little bit of hurt and frustration combined set my mood right back on the rocky side of things.   Now mind you, I'd not talked to John much about what my upset was all about.  No, no, I packed it in tight like tuna in a tin and stewed internally.

But as I shared with you in my diary, those feelings did what they generally do when packed too tightly.  They built up a head of steam.  John, bless him, missed the warning puff of smoke.  He lectured me in a good way and he was right as could be, but just then I wasn't in the mood to listen reasonably to anything except my own frustration and hurts and upsets.   So when he was all done, I let loose in volcano worthy streams of molten lava.  I hadn't even realized how angry I'd gotten about certain situations and circumstances in our lives but we both knew it as I sat there sobbing and loudly telling him all about it!   He did the very nicest thing he could have done.  He sat there and listened to it all without saying one word to assure me I was as base as I felt myself to be, or petty, or jealous, or any of the other words one might well have accused me of being and very rightly so.   

It was wonderful to feel tension and pressure release but at the same time, I am the sort who feels perfectly miserable for expressing less nice emotions.  John knows this and told me a bit later, when I was calmer and less prone to feel he might possibly just maybe be placating me, "It's ok to feel as you do...Its understandable.  I'm just sorry you've kept it inside and not expressed any of it before now."    This is something that I have been working on.

I think in my youth when I was so depressed it was because I was angry and I had no acceptable outlet for expression of my anger.  As an adult, I'd just carried that anger over into my marriages and life and it wasn't until Perimenopause hit that I realized how very angry I could be.  I didn't spew and rage and carry on even if someone deserved the full heat of my anger. I just learned to tuck it all in a bit tighter.  Occasionally as I dug down I'd find myself going deeper and deeper into my psyche and I began to recognize that I carried a lot of anger from my childhood and first marriage into this one.  

John is a bull of a man when he's upset.  He just lets it go and then he's done. His anger goes right to the point.  He might bluster a bit but he never handles himself in a way that he might have big regrets over later.  He doesn't call names. He doesn't harbor resentments.   But I have not gotten over my fear of voicing my anger.   Its not something he encourages me to forgo.  Gracious, he'd heaps rather I admitted my anger right at the start and got it out of my system.   But it's not something I'm terribly comfortable with, acknowledging my anger or stating why I'm angry clearly.  I'm going to work on this, both releasing and explaining why precisely I am angry.  I think it's never too late to change.  

I don't think I'm all that unusual.  I mean, in our day, women just weren't meant to be angry.  We could be 'hurt' but not angry.  Mind you I've known some angry women and they were nasty nasty nasty people and excused away their behavior based upon their 'right' to be angry.  There are good and bad ways to handle anger and I think the nasty sort are just as wrong as myself in biting it back.  There truly is a way to manage anger in a a beneficial way.   I just haven't learned it yet.  But I will.

Well I know it's a short chat and I do apologize, but I expect you shall want to hurry home before more of our afternoon/evening thunder storms come around.   I hope you'll come back to chat again soon.