Burn Out

I had a dream last week, shortly after the 15 visiting Norwegians departed, that I got in the car to go somewhere, put the key in the ignition and turned it, but the key broke in half, leaving half of it stuck in the ignition switch and the other half in my hand.  I wasn’t able to go anywhere and had no way to get the broken half out. 

It’s interesting how my subconscious manifested my conscious life in such a way, as I’ve been suffering total burn-out since our guests left last week.  I haven’t been able to do a thing, except call the septic guy to come pump our tank, since more than a Costco size bundle of toilet paper ended up down there.

Even the thought of opening the refrigerator was more than I could bear.  Having to figure out what to do with all the leftovers, the pieces of meat no one in this house will eat, the veggies that never made it into a salad – it’s all just been too overwhelming.  My husband and son were gone last week to Scout camp, so once the Norskies left, I ate cereal and milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I was so tired of cooking.

I’m not as exhausted physically, as I am mentally.  Perhaps it was having to speak Norwegian so much, or anticipate the needs of all those people, or coming up with Plan B, when the initial plans didn’t pan out.  Maybe it was the weeks of cleaning I did before they came or the sleeping on an air mattress that goes flat instead of my own bed while they were here.  I’m not sure what took the greatest toll, but some energy plug got pulled and I’ve yet to figure out how to recharge my batteries.  I guess that’s why, in my dream, the key was stuck in the ignition.

My husband tends to think I have endless amounts of energy and nothing slows me down.  Oh, if only he were around last week.  He only thinks I can’t relax.  The couch has been my friend.

A friend gave me the nickname “The Queen of Everything,” and when I was working for the phone company, my employees called me TWWGTD – which stood for “The Woman Who Gets Things Done.”  I think those days are gone.  I get tired now just thinking about doing something, long before I actually do it.

Kory came home from Scout camp and listened to my endless moaning about not having the energy to even clean out the frig.  He immediately began on the task – freezing that which can be frozen, tossing out that which was past due.  It was his way of restarting my engine.  He then got out a wire brush, a scraper and the pressure washer and put me to work prepping the side of our house that so desperately needs repainting.   He started quoting some NPR report that said people who have a purpose in life live longer.  I guess he figured I was just going to curl up on that couch and die.

Accidents

“Accidents can be prevented,” is a line I’ve used dozens of times over the years, directed at my son as well as my husband.  It’s a mother’s biggest worry – that something would happen that could injure a child – especially when it’s something that could have been prevented.  And just like Job is quoted in the Bible, “That which I have feared has come upon me.”

I think it would have been easier if the injury had happened to my son, rather than by my son.  He was outside playing badminton on Saturday, when he and a friend stepped away from the net and began smacking the birdie directly at each other. The birdie impacted his friend’s eye at such a high rate of speed he didn’t even have time to blink.  I knew it was bad when a bunch of yellow goo gushed out of his eye socket and he couldn’t see a thing. The pain was intense.

After an all too long six-hour wait at the emergency room, he found out he thankfully didn’t have a detached retina.  That was the initial fear and possible outcome of such an injury, but many were praying, so I won’t dismiss that a miracle happening in there somewhere.  The next day, and another doctor appointment later, he found out his iris suffered a few tears, but no surgery would be required and it will heal on it’s own.  Hallelujah for that.  My heart still ached for all the pain and stress he went through, though.  He didn’t once get upset and just joked that he was always worried he’d be the one inflicting pain on my son, as they horse around a lot, and he’s an incredibly buff dude.

It made me realize how someone’s life could change so dramatically in literally, just the blink of an eye.  The possibility existed that he could have been permanently blind on that side – over a simple game of badminton – on an otherwise uneventful summer day in the life of a teenager. Oh, how thankful I am it didn’t go that route. 

While my son wanted to dismiss the entire event as “just an accident” I made him back up to the point where he realized something could have been done differently that would not have ended with the same results.  Taking responsibility for our actions seem to be harder and harder in this country, as we all want someone else to be at fault. 

I used to work with the data from the “unusual occurrence reports” of a major hospital in Seattle.  Each and every little incident had to be reported to the legal department, in case it resulted in a lawsuit.  I saw lawsuits stem from crazy things like someone visiting a patient, stood up on a rolling chair in the room to tie up balloons, and fell off.  They sued the hospital for their injuries.

I’m hoping this badminton incident, and the idea that accidents can be prevented, is not soon forgotten, as both boys will be learning to drive in the near future, which opens up a whole new arena of worry for a mother’s heart, but as I’ve learned from experience, prayer is the best weapon I have.

Norsk Guests

By the Numbers:

What I’ve learned so far this week from hosting 15 Norwegians between the ages of 3 and 74…

1 trip per day to Costco is highly recommended.

2 toilets in the house isn’t enough and calls for a spare five-gallon bucket for those who can’t wait.

3 events in one day will even wipe out the energy level of the teenagers (car show in Lyman in the morning, air show in Arlington in the afternoon and truck races in Alger in the evening equals pure exhaustion.)

4 pounds of bacon for breakfast nearly every morning never provides leftovers.

5 rolls of Costco size toilet paper per day is about average usage.

6 cups of sour cream almost lasts one day when serving baked potatoes or tacos.

7 users is the maximum number of connections our internet can handle before it comes to a screeching halt.

8 pairs of shoes purchased so far by one person is just the beginning of the total number of shoes they plan to buy because everything is so much cheaper in America.

9 people talking in Norwegian at the same time at the dinner table makes it impossible for me to understand even a single one of them.

10-year-old twin boys have a lot of energy.

11 things so far I can’t find in my kitchen because they are being incredibly helpful in washing up and putting things away.

12 mosquito bites around one ankle is more than I can bear.  It comes from sitting outside all evening after dinner because that’s just what Norwegians do in the summertime - no matter what.

15 people, consisting of four generations of the same family, are easier to have around than just one family of four people.

17 beers their first evening at our house was only a drop in the bucket of the total number of alcoholic beverages consumed so far.

18 year olds in Norway can legally drink alcohol so they think they can here in America, too.

20 minutes in the car going anywhere is considered “terribly long.”

27 minutes is the average amount of time it takes for everyone to get loaded up in the vehicles once the word is out it’s time to go, even if we are just driving for three minutes to get ice cream at Snow Goose Produce.

36 cups of coffee in the morning isn’t enough.

48 eggs will not fill all the hungry tummies at breakfast when the menu is just bacon, toast and scrambled eggs.

60 minutes is about as long as any Norwegian can go while on vacation until they need to stop and rest and have a cup of coffee or eat a little ice cream.

$1,349 spent for a single dinner for all of us at the Space Needle didn’t even cause them to bat an eye.

Such valuable things I’ve learned… and I’m not even half way through their visit!

Our Car

In preparation for the onslaught of 15 Norwegians visiting us this summer, I began to do a little cleaning, purging and gardening.  It’s good to have an excuse to get things done that might otherwise not be tended to.

I hate dusting so I just do it once every few years, whether it needs it or not.  Our house is like a museum – full of stuff that brings back memories and as Kory says, “everything has a story.”  It’s hard to part with sentiments, but very easy now that I have an “over 50 brain” and can’t always remember the attachment.  Out it goes if the memory or meaning doesn’t pop into my head in short order.  It felt good to purge a little.

Strangely though, I don’t just feel attached to things in my house, I also feel deeply attached to my car.  It makes no sense, as there’s no real sentiment around it, I just love the car.  We bought it used, at an auction when it was four years old and had 110,000 miles on it. 

For years Kory had been anticipating his retirement from the carpenter’s union and the lump sump distribution he’d get at that time.  He’d long ago earmarked that money for buying a Harley Davidson motorcycle.  But things didn’t work out that way because two weeks after he retired, our son was born, so the two-door hatchback Toyota we were driving soon became impractical when dealing with a car seat.  A four-door car was a must and our only cash was his retirement check for $13,000.

We are firm believers you only buy a car you can pay for with cash, so Kory headed off to JG Murphy’s in Bothell one rainy Saturday morning and came home with the first four-door car up for sale that day.  Neither of us had ever even heard of a Lexus before then and we had no clue the bargain we’d gotten. Once we drove it, we felt it was just too nice of a car for the likes of us, but for the price we paid, we decided it was a keeper. And we’ve kept it now for more than 15 years. It currently has over 323,000 miles on it and it’s been a sweet ride.

So it was a sad day last week when I took it into the shop because it was making a clunking noise and the mechanic suggested it was time to “retire” the vehicle, as it wasn’t going to be a cheap fix.  I grieved.  I couldn’t let it go. I lost sleep thinking about losing a car I love so much and how could any other car take it’s place? 

The mechanic said it made no sense to pour money into a twenty-year old vehicle, but he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.  We are people who get something we like and we keep it – forever.  It’s just this side of hoarding.  My husband still has a car he bought in 1965. 

I felt safe marrying Kory, partly because of his old car, as it said to me he doesn’t get rid of things easily, and that might bode well for me.  I was right about that, and lucky for him and our Lexus, I’m the same way.

Family Game Night

I grew up in a home where the television was on all the time.  It was our “quality family time” all sitting around watching TV together.  Every night.  While it didn’t allow for any conversation, at least we were all focused on the same thing.

In our house these days, though, it’s not at all like that.  I’m too cheap to pay for cable so we don’t have TV reception.  We do all sit together in the living room on occasion, however, but it looks much different than family time when I was a kid.

My husband sits in the recliner holding his i-pad with headphones on, watching a movie via Netflix.  Kaleb curls up on the couch reading an electronic book on his Nook.  I sit with my MacBook emailing or making digital photo books.  We are all in our own little worlds and the only thing we share is the air we breathe.

We used to have Family Movie Nights when Kaleb was younger.  We’d order pizza and rent the latest G rated movie.  Now that he’s moved beyond G ratings, we can never agree on anything we all would like to watch together, so that tradition has nearly died out.

The one family tradition that still stands, however, is Family Game Night.  It’s been a weekend night tradition at our house for over a decade.  When we can, we slip it into a mid-week night as well, as we actually enjoy being focused on the same thing at the same time.  Or maybe we just enjoy beating each other.

The rule is that whoever won the last Family Game Night gets to pick which game we start off with the next time.  Kaleb’s favorite game is Settlers of Catan, but that is like the Monopoly of my day, and can take hours to play, so unless we start early, it’s not an option.

Our neighbor, Joan, used to come over in the fall and winter on Saturday nights to have a bowl of soup and play Cribbage with us.  She’d partner up with Kaleb and it was a rare evening they didn’t beat the pants off Kory and I.  In my book, getting together to play games with neighbors is one of the best ways to spend an evening.

Our other neighbors, the Torseths, taught us how to play Mexican Train as well as the card game Golf, which is always a hit on holidays when we have a house full of people and have hours to spend together after dinner.  Golf is a game wrapped in the element of surprise and chance and each play becomes a mini-drama as everyone hangs in the balance waiting for the turn of the cards.  It’s best played with folks who like a little drama.

I lean a bit toward the dramatic each time I win any game, as I stand up, arms outstretched and begin singing Queens’ rendition of “We are the champions” only, of course, I alter the words so that everyone knows it is “I” and I alone that is the champion, and they are all the losers.  I think this might be why my son has developed a very competitive spirit.  Not sure, but perhaps that’s it.  He hates to see me win.