stress

One Of Those Weeks

/ Diane Henders / 35 Comments

These photos perfectly illustrate the way my week has gone:

On the left is a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) that I bought last fall for about $15.

I carefully amended our crummy soil and tucked the little plant lovingly into the ground.  I hovered over it, cheered when it survived the winter, worried when it died back to the ground in the spring, and cheered all over again when it put out a few tiny sprigs of new growth.  During this whole hot drought-ridden summer, I’ve been hand-carrying water to it.  It’s about a foot tall.

On the right is… you guessed it:  another butterfly bush.  It apparently started itself from some wayward seed carried by wind or birds or whatever.  It’s growing in bare gravel that was dug up last spring, so it’s at least a year younger than the plant I bought.  It’s never been fussed over (in fact I didn’t even notice it until it started to bloom) and it hasn’t received a single drop of water that didn’t fall from the sky.  Did I mention we’re having a drought?

But the intrepid new butterfly bush is three feet tall and growing like stink.  Go figure.

That’s the kind of week it’s been:  Our well is beginning to show the stress of the drought and we’re not sure if it will supply enough water to get us through the rest of the summer.  We’ve been wrestling with well drillers and water consultants AGAIN (I was really hoping we were done with that for a few decades), and we still don’t have a decision or quote or timeline.  Hubby is being his usual laid-back self, but I’m finding it immensely stressful and time-consuming.

Still, though, things could be worse:  I was sitting outside enjoying a cup of tea one morning and listening to the pounding of hammers over at the neighbours’ place when I heard *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* OW, SHIT-F*&$#$F*#@B&$!!!

After my wince and (I’m ashamed to admit) instinctive snicker, I waited worriedly for a car to rush past on the way to the emergency room; but a few minutes later I was relieved to hear laughter and jovial teasing.  I’m glad nobody got seriously hurt, but I bet their week was a whole lot worse than mine.

So… no complaints.  We still have water (so far).  I’m still clinging to sanity (or to be precise, I can still fake sanity convincingly).

And hey, I got two butterfly bushes for the price of one!

How’s your week going?

Book 14 update:  The water fiasco ate up a bunch of my writing time this week, but I still made it to Chapter 9.  Onward!

 

Seagulls And Other S-Words

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

Alert the medical community:  Stress suppresses the juvenile-humour centres of the brain!

The proof:  Last week I completely missed the opportunity to make a dirty joke about herring spawning.  Millions of fish were coming their little brains out, and all I did was remark on the pretty jade-green water caused by all that fish-spunk.

Good Lord.  After 50-odd (okay, extremely odd) years of childishness, I’d hate to grow up at this late date.  But now that I’ve realized I’m on the slippery slope toward maturity, at least I can step off and reconnect with my inner adolescent.

So… speaking of sea-sex:  I have suspicions about those frisky seals.  All that frolicking and barking seems a lot like the human equivalent of “Here, hold my beer and watch this!”  They’re definitely angling to impress the chicks.

The sea lions, on the other hand, are only thinking about stuffing themselves.  Sex, schmex.  Mating season isn’t until June or July for them, so this is all about the foodfest.  On calm mornings the ocean is crowded with clusters of twenty or thirty sea lions bobbing along, bulging bellies to the sky and languid flippers in the air.

Which leads me to my next suspicion…

Actually, never mind that.  It’s not a suspicion; it’s a certainty:  Those sea lions aren’t just pigging out.  After they’d been around for a few days, the water wasn’t jade-green anymore.  It was brownish.  And, um… pungent-ish.

With the sea lions polluting the water and the herring roe decomposing in malodorous drifts along the shore, I rerouted my daily walk a little farther inland and enjoyed the ocean view with the windows closed.  The route revision wasn’t much of a hardship, though, since I’d already altered my walking habits due to the millions of seagulls.  The beaches were white with them as far as the eye could see:

No, that’s not snow on the beach; it’s wall-to-wall gulls

It wasn’t so bad when they were on the ground, but if something startled them (say, some foolish human walking along the beach) they’d rise in a solid wall and shit-strafe the beach.

It’s like something out of Alfred Hitchcock.

According to folklore, it’s good luck if a bird scores a bullseye on you; but it’s unclear whether it’s good luck for the shittee or the shitter.  I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.  Especially if the shitter is a seagull.  All I’m gonna say is:  Seagulls are sick, sick birds.

Apparently eagles don’t like seagulls any better than I do.  It’s easy to tell when an eagle shows up:  The shit-hawks take flight en masse.

I’m pretty sure the eagles are just messing with the gulls – they’ll swoop in and land on the freshly vacated beach, and then just sit there.  They’re not hunting or fishing; they’re just hanging around like schoolyard bullies hogging the playground while the seagulls circle anxiously overhead. (No word on whether the eagles get shit-strafed, but they’re probably too cool to admit it if they do.)

So this weeks’s S-words are stress, spawn, shit-hawks, spunk, suspicions, slippery slopes, sexy seals, sleepy sea lions, sea-sex, sick seagulls, and shit-strafing.  And of course, a healthy dose of silliness.

‘Maturity’ just doesn’t suit the subject.

See…?