Blue Collar Girl

There are days when I shower, style my hair with a round brush, put on makeup and wear jewelry and high heels.  I show houses, I go to closings, I attend meetings with bankers, I sign leases, and I try to stay on my best behavior.

And then, there are the days when I go to work at the investment property.  These are great days.  First of all, I don’t have to decide what to wear in the morning.  There is really just the one choice - the grubby, paint stained, unflattering clothing that I always wear to “the job site” will do just fine, thank you.  And, I get to wear my work boots!  The hair will simply be tossed into a hat with braids, and there will be no shower and no makeup whatsoever.  I know I look like shit, but I’m going to work, dammit!!  REAL work!!

I always arrive much later than the other contractors.  Sometimes it is because I have errands, but mostly I am just SO not a morning person.  When I arrive, there they are, the “guys”, listening to their music, all dusty and dirty, bantering, transforming whatever space they’re working on.  They have questions for me.  I love this part!!!!  We walk around and figure out how the kitchen should be laid out, whether a room needs a ceiling fan, which colors go where and discuss the various budgets and costs of things.  Then, I get to whatever work I’m going to do.  Oh, yes, I’m SO much less capable than they are.  But, I’m there, working along side them, usually removing wallpaper or painting a porch or doing landscape work.  

Sometimes I have to borrow their tools.  AWESOME!   I always ask them if they need anything when I run to the hardware store.  I realize that even if they did need something, they would likely never entrust me to actually choose and purchase said items for them, but I just love offering.  I’m part of the group!!  I don’t have to be on my best behavior, because they actually appreciate it when I swear like a truck driver (until they find out what my husband does for a living and then they get all nervous and start apologizing and I hate when that happens).  Some of them are crabby and weird, but mostly, they are just great.  And lately, I have begun to feel that they actually like having me around sometimes.  For example, I had a detailed conversation about potty training and “poop” the other day with one of the guys and I’m pretty sure none of the other guys would have been as enthusiastic about the topic as this mama was.

At the latest project, things have not been smooth sailing.  We’ve been robbed and vandalized.  The guys are so supportive.  A couple of them have "connections", which we’d never actually use, but just knowing that they know “thugs” somehow makes me feel better.  They tell me about auctions where we can pick up replacement tools for cheap and offer to let us use their tools.  I love these guys!!!  

Sometimes I hurt myself.  I’ve punctured my leg by kneeling on a nail, more than once:

When this happens, they always have bandaids for me, and I am sure to act strong and brave and not make a big deal about it even when inside I’m secretly calculating when my last tetanus shot was and considering the lead paint dust and mold particles which have surely entered my body and are causing blood disorders and God only knows what other problems.  But, I can research all that online later.  Today, I’m working!!  I’m one of “them” and I’m sure not going home crying over a nail in the leg, that’s for damn sure.

Sometimes there are toilets available at certain points during construction at these projects (if not, it becomes necessary to acquaint oneself with the nearest reasonable public toilet, especially when you’re a girl and have given birth several times and aren’t getting any younger...).  The current house had bathrooms which needed to be completely gutted, including the toilets.  The plumber left one operational (I use this term loosely) toilet in the basement, right in the middle of the big open space.  No doors, no privacy, really no way of any kind of knowing when somebody is about to come down the stairs and see you hovering over this:

Yep, folks.  I have peed in that toilet.  Multiple times!!!  And other than the day when some water splashed up onto my butt cheek, sending me into a whole separate frenzy of anxiety, I will have you know that I’ve mastered the entire process.  I dash down when they are all busy with power tools upstairs, I hover, I flush-with-foot, I pretend like I don’t notice the sign that says you have to shut off the water when you’re done (so I don’t have to touch anything at all) and I dash back upstairs.  I’ve (knock wood) never been ‘busted’ mid-pee.  Can you not see how I’m part of the gang??  I just fit right in.

There is, however, one important distinction.  With very few exceptions, I have certain “standards” about my food at the work site which they seem not to have.  Example:

Please note that while this apple doughnut from Sarah Jane’s bakery in NE Minneapolis sits on this DIRTY water cooler next to the bag of OPENED Mediterranean dried apricots, there is dust flying all around!!!  People are scraping lead based paint and mold and stirring up dirt from a house that has been contaminated with animal feces, piles of who knows what else and these guys are NOT EVEN WORRIED ABOUT GERMS!!!  Notice that even my purse is zipped shut, so as not to contaminate its contents and right after I took this photo, I actually made the decision to remove the purse entirely from that room.  

So maybe I won’t ever exactly fit in.

But still, I just love my blue collar days...

Halloween

Just read a letter from my son's Junior High Principal regarding Halloween.  Here is the policy for students wanting to dress up:


The expectations for those students who would like to dress up for Halloween is as follows:

a) Costumes must be in good taste and not offensive to gender, religion or race. 

b) Student attire which is disruptive to the learning process or is a danger to student

health and safety or causes an interference with school-related activities will not be tolerated. Those students whose costumes/dress does not meet criteria will be asked to correct the situation. Those students who refuse will be referred to administration.

c) Students will not be allowed to use colored hairspray in the building. 

d) The no hat policy is in affect. 

e) We will not allow facemasks or face paint. 

f) Absolutely no weapons, fake weapons, or items used to look like weapons.

Pretty much sounds like no fun at all, doesn't it?  Isn't the POINT of Halloween to distract from our daily activities?

So, I guess Jake won't be going as this:

Still Life with Monarch on Dog Shit

The plants are confused.  It’s mid October in Minnesota and they should be happily dying back into the ground right now, sleepy and content to wait it out while we all endure yet another grueling and much-too-long winter.  But there’s a hot wind blowin’ through these parts.  We are breaking records, with temps soaring into the 80s and my garden babies are thinking it must be time to try again...

This oriental poppy bud should make me happy.  I fucking love to garden!!!  But I resent the poppy for blooming like this in October.  I resent the anxiety it creates....what if the frost comes quickly and the confused plant doesn’t have time to die back and it dies altogether and all the time I spent nursing it and creating compost for it is wasted and I have to start all over again??  I would like to be taking a fall hike or going to the apple orchard, but I am compelled, I simply MUST keep this poppy watered, because look at it, all optimistic and ready to create, bloom, exist!!!!

Damn it.  

And how about this Cardinal Flower, acting like it’s time to pop out of the ground when I just bought it at the Farmer’s Market a couple weeks ago and it was supposed to wither away, thank you, and come back strong NEXT year.  

Excuse me, plant life.  I think we missed something here.  It’s called WINTER!

Don’t get me wrong.  You KNOW how much I love summer.  But the thing is, for an avid gardener, we need a break.  We can’t keep this momentum going all year round.  We have to have that moment when we say, “Screw it!” - I’m DONE.  I will NOT deadhead another marigold.  I will NOT mix up another container of Miracle Gro.  I will NOT water that Dogwood (that was half eaten by the Japanese Beatles, anyway) even one more time.  I won’t!!!  As much as we love it all, we have to give it up at some point.  Surrender.  It is part of the process.  It’s a relief!!  Why else do we live in this godforsaken climate if we can’t have a little break once in a while???

But here we all are this October, watering, clipping, harvesting, trying to keep the “will to garden” going.  We need massive quantities of bug spray, because even though it hasn’t rained for weeks and our National Park areas are burning up with wildfire from the drought, the mosquitos have evidently found a watery place to continue hatching.  We are hot, and we should be wearing long pants and shirts to protect us from the thistles and nettles that have overtaken the garden, but we are hoping for that last little bit of color on our skin so we take risks with tank tops and shorts and end up with rashes and scrapes and bites of all kinds.  We pick ourselves up off the couch again the next day with our sore backs and head outside, preparing the gardens for next year, knowing we’ll be glad next spring, when we again have the energy and interest for all of this.

It’s funny, isn’t it?  Remember last February, when the Burpee Garden Catalog came in the mail and we paged through it expectantly?  Remember when we started drawing out the plans for the garden and ordered up more plants and seeds that we needed or could have possibly used?  Remember when we scrolled through our garden photos from past years, desperate to remember it all, as the arctic air whistled through our storm windows and we huddled by the fireplace with our coffee?  Remember when we paid extravagant prices for tulips at the grocery store, just so we could have a little piece of that garden on our kitchen table??

My neighbor pulled up to the garden on her riding mower as I was collecting what was left of the rotten, stinking tomatoes to put in the compost.  She commented about how much they had enjoyed the tomatoes we had shared with them and I told her I was sorry that I couldn’t keep the plants going any longer but I am DONE!  She suggested that maybe next year I don’t need to plant quite so many tomatoes.  I started stammering some explanation of how I really do love it, I like making spaghetti sauce and of course I have to plant 16 tomato plants and soon I realized that I really just should stop talking because I have gone beyond any sense of reason with my garden and I promptly changed the subject.  And she, not being a gardener, will surely think I’ve gone completely off my rocker when she sees me head out next spring, yet again, to do it all over.

There was a “Hail Mary” moment over the weekend, mind you.  A last little we-will-keep-enjoying-this-massive-high-maintenance-hobby-of-a-yard-we-created moment.  Our friends from down the street came over.  We fed them bruschetta with jalapenos and cherry tomatoes from the garden.  We mixed them Mojitos with fresh mint from the garden.  We drank the wine they brought that had something to do with Minnesota that I can’t remember because I had quite a bit of it.  We fantasized about cleaning up and weeding the community entrance to our neighborhood, which has been let go since the association is defunct (Sasha and I will actually do this next year when I can think about it, but right now, I throw up a little in my mouth when I drive by there, just looking at it...).  We momentarily basked in the glory of all that we have tried to create, in the name of community and fresh and organic and locally grown goodness.  

But still.

So I walked outside this morning, having mustered up the energy to water the newest of the 190 trees we have planted since moving to suburbia.  A monarch caught my eye, perched on a giant pile of Lola’s dog shit.  Let’s face it, dog shit in the yard is not beautiful.  It conjures up visions of scraping it out from the 1st grader’s shoe after he smashed his foot into it and walked through the house, because of course he didn’t notice the smell or the mess.  It causes resentment...who was supposed to pick it up and looked the other way?  Who mowed the lawn last?  A person could go on and on, really.

But, the butterfly!  Oh, the gorgeous, peaceful and gentle butterfly.  I do love the butterfly.  And perhaps the monarch on this dog shit is my reminder that I need to keep finding the beauty in it all.  The confused plants, the dried up lawn, the stinking tomato innards that splattered on my leg when I stepped in the wrong spot, hell - even the dog shit.  All beautiful.  All part of life.

And now, can we please get some cool temps and rain, already?