By David Graves, Guest Blogger for the moment
Sometimes reality falls short of your expectations
It could be the anticipation we have around an upcoming event that has built up, stewed for a while, and gathered momentum faster than we realized. Cyndi has a term for this condition when you’re “scited”! A little scared and excited simultaneously. Or it could be that the actual living of the event includes many things that were just not in your mental image. Things that detract from your enjoyment, 106-degree temperatures for that picnic you were looking forward to, pesky mosquitos at your outdoor sunset wedding, you get the idea….
I think if you were truly living in the moment, you would encounter this less, the build-up to the event would have less time to brew. But for whatever reason, sky-high expectations, a poorly planned, boring, or poorly executed event, sometimes, things could be nicer. This phenomenon has happened to me many times in my life (especially when I was younger) and I expect it to continue to a lesser degree until I step off the curb. Speaking of stepping off the curb, events in your life don’t get much bigger than that! Can I just ignore this item on my upcoming calendar, should I dread the inevitable, or will I feel more joy and peace than I knew possible? We will return to that topic in a future blog. Suffice to say for now, I’m scited!
That’s why we can’t have nice things!
The reason I mention this is the true topic of my post. I’ve heard “That’s why we can’t have nice things!” more than once in my life and after living on the farm for the last six years, trying to build and improve most everything from the ground up, I’ve come to realize why I recently said those exact words to Cyndi.
A few months back, I bought a car (new to me). It was far from a new car since it was a 2008, but it was immaculate and only had 9K miles! I was so excited that I flew into Washington DC and took a little ‘puddle jumper’ over to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to pick it up. It was all that I had hoped for, and it was certainly NOT a time when expectations fell short. It was even better in person than in the pictures. It was especially marvelous because I was driving it home to our house with no schedule other than three more full days of PTO to make this journey. This story could be long, but I will reluctantly skip over the delicious details of the sunshiny-convertible-top-down-cruising-in-the-passing-lane-hair-blowing-in-the-wind-playing-your-favorite-music-loud road trip back home!
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| Peppy in the wild |
When I got back, I placed my little baby in the garage slot #3 that I had cleared out before I left. Everything was right with the world, until I came out the next day to find the beautiful black convertible top was coated in white hair. The (formerly black) canvas top looked like a furry white hamster had made a nest for her young! While I searched the garage for the offending hamsters, I realized that there were scratches all the way up the side of the fender and across the shiny red hood. These scratches led directly to the hamster house on top, and I realized it was one of our cats that had made herself (Finn) comfortable for the evening. Luckily, she was no where to be seen at the time, but I thought to myself, “This is why we can’t have nice things”! I drove directly to the nearest auto parts store for a car cover. On the way, I had time to adjust to the thought that the scratches were small, and I might be able to buff them out with a lot of work and a gentle touch…. maybe.
Now I was set, and I had almost fully recovered from the “cat incident” when I decided to take a little spin in my baby on the first weekend home. I take the cover off and put it in the wheelbarrow to keep it off the floor. It was a great trip, and I arrived back home relaxed and feeling pretty good about life. Until…. I pulled out my car cover to find it was covered in urine, cat urine to be specific. Did I tell you “This is why we can’t have nice things…”?
So, this type of thing happens regularly on the Graves Farm. Hand-laid flagstone porch painstakingly laid out and cemented down, is consistently covering in a multi-colored mosaic of chicken poo….
Random dog holes dug deeply into the freshly laid sod you spent the weekend putting in yourself. Then you remember that you’re replacing the dirt and sod you put in that same damn location last year….
See a pattern here yet?
Not long ago, I had finally gotten around on my project list to item #578 - Get New Sidewalk! We needed a new sidewalk laid before Brooks trips on one of the ginormous gaping cracks and hurts himself, and before Cyndi or I must start pushing one another around in a wheelchair! When Cyndi pushes me, I want it to be easy for her and smooth for me. That would be a ‘nice thing’. Let me show you the picture I had in my mind....
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| Ooooh, Aaaaah! 👏👏 |
See how beautiful, smooth and level it is, as far as the eye can see.
Won’t it be beautiful when the men in front of our house, running their jack hammer for days, finally finish the destruction so they can pour this beautiful piece of art from our drive to our front door???
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| A view from the Ring cam |
Three days later the cement crew arrives to put in the forms and pour my beautiful vision! Super Scited! I tried to stay out of their way while they worked, and I focused on keeping the cold drinks and water coming all morning. Later in the afternoon when the cement should be troweled, smooth, and drying. I looked out to see every one of the workers just standing by their section of the sidewalk, hands on hips and staring at their project… I walked out to see what could be going on and was immediately shocked into our new shared reality! No less than 7 different chickens had put their initials in the beautiful work the men had spent the morning doing!
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| Noooooooooo! |
This is why we can’t have nice things….
I was horrified, embarrassed and frantic to find and corral all the chicken marauders that had simultaneously “tagged” our sidewalk! I apologized profusely while herding the chickens into the barn and front pasture where I (at least) had a fighting chance of keeping them out of the cement splash zone for 6 hours! Keeping chickens out of anywhere for more than a few minutes would take a Presidential Secret Service team and several firefighters, yet I managed to occupy them with food and entertainment for the next few hours until Cyndi could get home to help. By dusk they were all getting sleepy and heading to the barn for night-night in chicken town. Whew, disaster avoided you say! Unfortunately, night-night for chickens is the morning alarm clock for cats! I could hardly wait to stay up all night with my night-vision goggles to ward off any feline on a beeline to our fresh cement!
These are only a few of the multitude of ‘nice things’ gone bad on the farm. Coupled with our inexplicable talent of creating chain-reaction turmoil, you can see that it can wear on you if you let it. Let me say that there were times that I definitely “let it”! I mean, I love the animals but when one chases the other to their demise, or the dogs lay facing each other so they can each chew off the other one’s $275 electric-fence collars at the same time, you wonder what-the-what? We have spent countless hours trying to guess what’s next, but we’ve found that you’ll never have enough imagination to see it more than mere seconds before it smacks you in the face.
Wow, okay, let’s regroup!
I have worked through this with a lot of self-assessment and the realization that my wife, daughters, and grandchildren have blessed me with some new life perspectives. It felt like it happened so slowly that you don’t even notice it, but then it hits you like an electric shock and the right perspective finally takes hold. It must have been working out of the view of your consciousness all along, like your sub-conscious mind’s been working on a Rubik’s Cube in the background while the rest of you goes through your regular daily routine. That’s when I realized that God has blessed me with a plethora of things nicer than I could have ever imagined.
Don’t look in the garage, or in the bank, or the refrigerator, or anywhere outside. All your nicest things are on the inside, in your heart.
Appreciate the love you share with your spouse, your kids, grandkids, all the creatures that are counting on you for sustenance and support, the blossoming flowers you planted last year, the blooming blackberry bushes back in the forgotten corner of our lot, the birth of the daughter and then the granddaughter of the first lamb Cyndi saved when it was less than a day old and didn’t have a mother, saving some baby birds that fell out of their nest a little too soon and watching them grow and fly away.
Appreciate all the things that contribute back to your soul. Despite our condition or disposition, we are surrounded by wonderful things beyond measure.
Life’s little issues are just that, keep them in their place and enjoy your blessings while you can!
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| Things like my fishing instructor (Nice outfit)! |
