The Sleep-disrupting Obsession of Tidying Up

I’m flirting with the edges of being fastidious about cleaning, to the point of almost wanting to seek help.

Let me explain.

This morning as I slept in gloriously and well past my usual 4:30-5:00a.m. rising time, I was in a dream where I’d spilled a couple large handfuls of beads on a short shag carpet (side note: the character “Hank” from Corner Gas is with me. Lovely comedy series out of Canada, worth watching if you have Amazon Prime. The beads were his. No idea how he featured in my REM sleep episode). I could feel myself slowly waking up but I tried to push myself back into the dream so I could finish cleaning up the mess I’d made. If you’re an armchair psychologist reading this, I’ve just given you your moment.

I took a rake to the chicken run the other day, just to see the bare soil cleared of the stones and pebbles they displace for their feather-cleaning dirt baths. A few of the neighborhood raccoons also like to climb in there at night and dig like they know where they’re going, leaving ankle-turning divots in random spots between the gate and the coop. Since I prefer to start and end my days without fall or injury, I consider raking the run a safety measure first and foremost (but will allow the full rush of the cleaning thrill to race through me and savor it). Of course they mess it up after I’m finished. I don’t mind. I’ll get to sweep it into a semblance of order again, like one of those desktop Zen gardens with the sand and a little rake. I think I’m onto something here—poultry care as Meditation. Follow me for more life enhancement tips.

On my morning walks, I pick up fallen limbs and branches to save that much more wear and tear on the mower’s blades, basking in the long view of a clear green path that looks like velvet. But when I arrive in the woods and sink into that one place where the deer trails crisscross beneath a grandfatherly black walnut and a grove of blue beech saplings, it’s all I can do not to reach down and move the scraps of bark that litter the forest floor at their feet, scooping them into a tidy little pile for some wild creature to notice and appreciate. Oh, and there’s a branch blocking the path and, while I’m bent double with my face near the mayapples, let me just pick up those twigs and…I stop, drop whatever is in my hands and remember what I’ve read about how every forest makes good use of what the trees give up. What I call “tidying up” is actually displacement for thousands of organisms trying to keep house in their own way. Just walking on their tiny communities is disruption enough. It’s a wonder the woods let me back in at all, behaving all human like I do. Gently chastened, I step slowly and carefully along the path back toward the main trail and head towards the meadow. Surely there’s something I can rearrange there without causing any harm. Sigh…it never ends.

I’m also a clean-as-I-go cook and baker, starting with a full dishpan of soapy water to collect the utensils, pots and pans that have served their purpose in the mixing and folding part of the recipe. By the time the parchment-lined baking sheet is in the oven, the drainer is a monument to dish Jenga, droplets of water sliding down the sides of the large auction-scored Tupperware mixing bowl now happily on its way to “dry”. I can sit at the table with a cup of tea, my elbow inches away from the baking racks where those gluten-free almond chocolate chip cookies will cool nicely, the only chore remaining to lift one to my mouth while it’s still warm. You may call that OCD; I call it peace and cleverness.

If Mom were here, she’d shake her head and insist I didn’t inherit this commitment to clean from her. She’s being too hard on herself. She was a Master Organizer and we learned the art of “everything in its place” at her knee. Measuring cups were stacked neatly and stored in the cupboard, their handles always—always—pointing in the same direction and facing the cupboard door so you could reach in and grab them easily. Repurposed butter tubs and other plastic containers, with their matching and perfectly fitting lids, mind you, knew the same ordered contentment. Her sheet music and songbooks were safely tucked away in the bench of the baby grand piano in the family room; we knew exactly where the olive-green Reader’s Digest Favorites collection was when we needed it for an impromptu sing-a-long. And downstairs beneath the pantry shelves, where cans were arranged in helpful rows by type and size, with creamed corn in the back, hidden by us kids in the hopes she wouldn’t find it (she always did), large plastic trash bins held our Halloween costumes, folded neatly and wrapped in trash bags to keep out any moisture. We might have looked a bit wrinkled on our annual trick-or-treat forays into the neighborhood, but we never smelled of mildew. That’s good parenting, that is.

It would seem I’ve moved those life lessons forward into our own land-based rhythm, perhaps in an attempt to keep such a vast space manageable where the borders of wild and tame shake hands. In a life where our eyes land on projects in process no matter what direction we’re facing, the act and art of cleaning, even a small corner of something, feels like control in the most noble sense. Yesterday’s storm may have scattered cottonwood branches everywhere, but I can walk unencumbered through the living room without tripping on stray shoes or gathering little clumps of cat hair on my toes. We can eat safely from each plate and bowl stored in the kitchen cabinets and see our reflections in the bathroom mirror, our faces unfreckled by dried splatters of toothpaste from last night’s oral hygiene rituals. These days, if it brings peace to a furrowed brow, I’m all for it, no matter how it may appear to a stranger’s way of thinking.

So what if it invades even my most pleasantly quirky dreams? I’m still getting some decent REM sleep and if I awaken with one less mess to clean up, all the better. Now, if you’ll forgive me, it’s time to let the chickens out and I’ll need to fetch my rake for that.

An Amazon Driver Pulls Into a Cemetery...

A gentle rumble of thunder broke loose from an approaching band of storms, setting off on its own to see the world, and the skies have been silent since. I had just closed the heavy wooden door to the old goat barn, sliding it smoothly on its overhanging track after finishing an impulsive and random bit of pre-breakfast yard work that took me from trimming trees and moving cars to weeding around the raised beds and adding another pillowy layer of straw mulch to the thirsty Chinese cabbage. The rain we’re getting today is a welcome relief to gardens and fields of every size and scale. I could hear our farm neighbors exhaling into the humid air as I shed my boots in the mud room and stepped into the kitchen to heat some water for my morning tea.

The farmers’ market yesterday was a soaked and low-key affair, with a smaller crowd of sturdy, good-natured patrons in all manner and style of rain boots strolling through the puddles, giving the tops of their carrot and onion bundles a free rinse between visits to vendors’ stalls. We were busier than we expected to be in such conditions and grateful as always, setting our sights on the naps that awaited both of us once the truck was unloaded back home. We didn’t come close to selling out like the previous weeks, but didn’t mind too much. The advantage to coming home with product is being halfway packed for next weekend’s market. We’re “glass half full” people ‘round here.

The intermittent showers and customer traffic gave us time for some rare people-watching, imagining the stories that bookended their Saturday morning market pilgrimage. It was a real-time creative writing assignment—remember those from middle school, where you were given a photo and you had to fill in the backstory? Let me assure you, we had no interest in being critical or snarky with our observations. Quite the opposite. We gave our curiosity a workout, combining it with a good dose of amnesty and leeway for the hidden elements of the lives that crossed in front of and occasionally stopped at our stall. Sheltered from the pelting rain, we had a front row seat to a sliver of humanity going about their days’ to-do lists.

Umbrellas were everywhere (children in tow employed them with varying degrees of skill and satisfaction. Suffice to say, quite a few parents would be toweling off their youngsters when they got back home) and dogs on leashes shook out their fur at regular intervals. Tattoo art alone was reason enough to pull up a chair and make a day of it, but the market ends at noon and the village leaders are quite clear that vendors need to be but a memory by 1:00p.m. So we made good use of the four hours given us. What about the two young women sporting dreadlocks and thin leather bracelets, pulling a small red canvas-sided wagon across the wet parking lot? Holding hands, they browsed the all-natural dog biscuit stand and plucked two bags from the table to add to their collection of garlic, honey, cinnamon sugar donuts and a tall plastic container of pickles. What will they have for lunch? How long have they been together? Maybe the market is a fun early morning date? Such questions we would probably not ask them if they stopped for a sample of our Cranberry Orange Pecan granola, but we’d leave the door wide and respectfully open just in case. Curiosity without respect nudges the shallows of voyeurism; that’s simply not our vibe. We kept a eye out for one of the market’s regular patrons, a young man with his pet boa draped over his shoulders, pushing his toddler daughter in her stroller.

When customers do linger at our booth, trying more than one of the samples we keep in quaint mason jars topped with repurposed parmesan cheese shaker lids (they fit perfectly), we exchange pleasant bits of information, learn about their allergies and dietary preferences and confirm that we do indeed make every batch in our humble farm kitchen, rendering air fresheners and scented wax melts obsolete. They smile and sometimes laugh, select the flavors they liked best and promise to return. Many of them do, volunteering descriptions of how the Strawberry Vanilla they bought last week ended up as the topping for a midweek berry crisp or decorated their morning’s smoothie bowl in a sweet arc just around the edge. To be included even infinitesimally in a tiny slice of their day’s nourishment is a privilege that hums beneath our busy hands when we bake up the next batch. They could just have easily come back, purchased their next bag and then walked away.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re barely on the sidelines of anyone else’s stories but our own, and that’s on our best days. Most of the time our fellow humans get up, shower, dress and manage their lives’ details without any help or acknowledgement from us. They make their choices and mistakes away from our watchful and sometimes regrettably judgmental eyes, pick themselves up off the floor and carry the lesson forward. I often imagine the film clips that cleverly speed up the scene at a subway station, making travelers stream through the turnstiles like so much vertical water, each life a film unto itself. In my moments of pause, I wish them well and a life of ease, cheer on their triumphs with both hands in the air, hoping that perhaps they’re doing the same in the quiet corners of their hearts for all of us too. Presuming good intention about those who people the concentric circles of our lives is a lovely way to frame one’s existence. When practiced with some intention and regularity, it keeps the corners of one’s heart free from the dust and debris of bitterness or envy and makes those anxious moments in freeway traffic kinder (maybe the driver who cut it a little too close or didn’t use their turn signal is speeding to the bedside of an ailing friend. Of course they can move ahead of me). There’s far too much missing information in that brief encounter for me to draw conclusions about someone’s character and etch them in unforgiving stone for all eternity.

Whenever I have the chance, I take time to get to know someone, if they let me. Even a little bit. After forty years of interviewing volunteer applicants, I’ve got the mechanics of asking questions rock solid in my skill set. But it’s my curiosity that takes the lead in those conversations, and I willingly follow where folks lead me. When circumstance doesn’t allow for those protracted and dare I say sacred encounters, I do my best to fill in the gap with a charitable imagination. Like the other day, when I was driving home from work…

My commute takes me on a hilly two-lane ride cutting through farm fields and woods that hug the road and one intersection in a township that boasts a “mall” on one of the corners (it’s actually a quick-stop with two gas pumps and a modest deli counter but if the good people of Fredonia want to call it a mall, who am I to say otherwise? I’m just a visitor, passing through. I did stop once for a bag of white cheddar popcorn, back in the pre-pandemic days of eating food on the go that required licking one’s fingers. Sigh…I miss those days).

On that particular day, I was following an Amazon delivery van moving rather “not from around here” slowly when he turned into the gravel entrance of a small cemetery at the top of a hill and inched forward, looking left and right as if for the address listed on his next stop. I had so many questions rush to the front of my mind in an instant but with a string of cars behind me, couldn’t gather anymore clues without inciting a two-lane country road riot so I continued onward, curiosity unsatisfied. In the absence of facts, I let my imagination unspool across myriad possibilities, any of which would make a good story for a writer more skilled in fiction than I am. Do cemeteries have addresses? Could the package he needed to deliver have borne a fountain-pen inscribed destination that simply read “Alfred Bates, 1904 - 1975, Ninth Row on the Left, Third Stone From the Right”, like a letter from Hogwarts? How to explain that incomplete delivery to his boss back at the hub? I wish I’d given into the impulse to turn in behind him, follow him to the back row fringed in the oldest of cottonwoods. But, alas, the moment escaped me in a nod to good sense and I’ll never know what he was doing there or who, lying in repose beneath the grass, might have ordered a new set of soft bamboo sheets (sorry, that’s where my mind landed when I wondered what residents of a cemetery might need from This World, being all horizontal like they they are). Or maybe he just pulled in for a late lunch, his own bag of white cheddar popcorn waiting patiently on the seat next to him.

It goes without saying that I’ll be on the lookout for that van, or any Amazon van, when I go to work tomorrow morning. That’s one story I’d be willing to chase down.

The Little Stuff (that ain't little at all)

Before I head out to the garden to find where we planted the onions, let me just savor a few things:

A completely raccoon-free night, as evidenced by all the potted plants on the porch and the bird feeders, hummingbird ones included, just as we left them at dusk last night.

Kittens, full of breakfast and now napping somewhere out of my line of sight, litter boxes cleaned, and dishes done.

Wiping my own breakfast crumbs from my mouth with a sweet aqua paisley cloth napkin I made last week, the fabric a gift from Patrick when he landed safely at home after his two-week Sundance odyssey.

The relentlessly cheerful trill of a house wren flitting from one low silver maple branch to another, clearly excited about something and everything.

My feet on the walking paths this morning for the first time in weeks, feeling familiar and brand new in one. Touching the grooved bark of the faithful black walnut who lives just feet off the trail, forehead pressed into its rough skin, I emptied my soul of its gratitude.

Watching as the male orioles let their female counterparts have first dibs at the tiny glass cup filled with raspberry jelly.

Knowing that Patrick will wake up soon and we’ll get to be together, vertically for the daylight hours, peacefully horizontal when the skies are dark and starlit over our heads.

Doing what I could on this morning’s walk to free up and disentangle some young sycamore and ash saplings from the thorny vines chewing their way up their tender limbs. It didn’t look like much but as I walked away, I could have sworn I heard someone exhale in relief.

Needing the thin fleece blanket draped across my lap. In July.

Looking back on a nearly sold-out market day yesterday, looking forward to the prep that awaits me in the kitchen this afternoon, chopping pecans, zesting oranges, measuring out salt and oats.

The troubling dreams from last night, now evaporated with the morning’s dew.

Inspecting the garden’s progress with Patrick, noting significant improvement after last week’s glorious soaking rain quenched the thirst of pretty much everything we planted, including our first go at ground cherries.

The look and feel of jacketless navy-blue linen book cover that will soon become a travel journal after a bit of stitching and some PVA glue.

Having the presence of mind to purchase not one but two sets of popsicle molds two years ago during lockdown, now tucked into the freezer fully employed and filled with a blueberry-nectarine-yogurt smoothie blend.

Feeling not a speck of guilt as the chocolate from a salted caramel melts in my mouth hours before lunch.

The pure joy of well-sharpened pruners doing their work in my hands.

All the grapevines waiting to be cut and twisted into garden art.

Eyes and hearts that read these words. You put my heart in a constant state of thankfulness and savoring.

Friends, this is an exercise I recommend highly. So, be off with you, into your rich and full days, to sit among all that delights you. If it’s a little hard to locate at the moment, buried under weeds of despair and grief, I send you comfort and confidence that you’ll find each other eventually.

(Now…where did we plant those onions?)

What I Did on My Summer Vacation...Sort of

I think I did this vacation all wrong.

While Patrick took good care of the People at Sundance, some 1500 miles away, I tended to all things land-connected here at home, releasing the chickens into their feathery pecking day each morning and tucking them in at dusk while gleaming pairs of raccoon eyes peered out from the thicket hoping for a chance at a robust meal. Thankfully, the wire-wrapped coop continued to do its job for the fourteen days I was on my own, letting me focus on a few landscaping projects of the heavy-lifting variety.

Here’s how it went for the first few days: I’d get up before the sun had even nudged the horizon and wheel the garden cart to the half-acre plot behind the house, toting a shovel, rake, lopers and trimmers to tame the thistle and quack grass creeping hungrily toward the raised beds. In my mind, the plan was to frame this area in a wooden pallet border, leaving a couple of gaps for easy entry gates and then reinforce it with rolls of welded metal fencing to slow down the midnight marauders who like nothing better than to dig up our sweet Cherokee Purple and Atomic Grape tomato plants, still too young to even sport a blossom. Before Patrick left, I scrounged successfully for the majority of the pallets I’d need, hitting the mother lode with one supplier who is willing to trade pallets for granola. And she’s kind to boot—don’t you just love people sometimes?

One pallet, one t-post at a time, the garden wall grew and if you squinted a bit, it looked mostly straight. I wasn’t going for a photo shoot finish, just something modestly functional that maybe we’d paint one of these days, or years. Something whimsical, like sunflowers from the ‘60s or a mural depicting a tree going through the four seasons (I’ll keep you posted). As I hoisted the heavy post driver over my head to thread it onto the tall tip of a post, I spoke aloud my promise to Patrick: no injuries, no trips to the ER. Only once, in a weary moment, one of the handles of the post driver bumped into my cheek as I lifted it up and off of the freshly-placed post. Thanks to chaos theory, physics and possibly some garden muses on full alert, my face sported no bruise that would need explaining when I got back to work.

Before you get all impressed, it’s important to note that I paused each day’s progress around 8:00am., roughly three hours into it, and spent way too much time after that scrolling through the day’s news and purposeless videos, wandering the house missing Patrick, and wondering what to make for dinner. On one particularly hot and humid Wednesday, I sat as motionless as I could on the couch, feeling regret and self-care approval in equal measure. Getting up to draw the curtains and finally turn on the window AC unit was a big deal that day.

In past years, when I had this much time stretched out before me and no one to share it with, I rolled out grandiose plans that included the Wild and Never-Tried, like taking myself out to lunch in a more upscale restaurant, throwing a couple of sleeping bags in the back of the truck and driving out to one of the best places in the field to star-gaze all night and keeping the sink free of dishes (I’m ok to set the bar low on that one—there’s nothing quite like waking up on vacation to a clean kitchen). With Patrick safely tucked away on the reservation, miles away and out of sight, I’d schedule much-needed home improvement projects like extending the front deck and adding new steps, remodeling the kitchen and painting the bathroom. I missed him of course, but also knew he’d never approve of the way I’d approach these secret plans. The year of the kitchen remodel, I needed to prep the area for the contractors while he was still here, so he did see the refrigerator and the tea hutch in the living room but had no idea where the rest of that project was heading. One year I changed the locks on the doors and he came home early (around 1:00a.m.) unable to get in until he’d tossed a few pebbles at the upstairs bedroom window, startling me out of a sound slumber. Sigh…those were the days…

But this year, I felt rudderless and set adrift on a sea of no motivation save for those pallets and a loosely shaped image of clearing the ridge above the meadow. A reality had come home to roost—I was no longer thirty-something with energy to spare, able to set my hands and shoulders to multiple heavy lifting tasks for hours and need only a quick tuna salad sandwich before heading out to finish hand-weeding the 20’ x 60’ garden rows down by the creek. Three hours in the pre-dawn cool of the day is my limit now and somewhere in the past twenty-three years I acquired a cell phone, which hasn’t helped matters. What held fast to my heart, though, for the duration of this vacation was a weighty glimpse of what life might be like without my man, an uncomfortable mix of retirement and widow practice. I sat on the curb-gleaned wooden platform glider looking into the mouth of the meadow and an empty future. I couldn’t shake it for days.

To be fair, I could also claim pandemic and world news fatigue as backdrop to this year’s vacation malaise (it’s been an especially rough couple of weeks if you support the moral direction of the left). One particular day’s headline gave me enough rage to obliterate a tough thicket of ruthless brambles beneath a grove of mulberry saplings. Sweaty and spent, I dumped the last load of thorny sticks from the garden cart and strode back to the house, a new sense of purpose in hand. I looked over my shoulder at tidy pallet garden enclosure and knew that difficult things were indeed possible. Not the two-week vacation take-away I’d imagined, but I’ll take it nonetheless.

I did make it to our local farmers’ market one Saturday (the one down the road where our granola made its debut; not the one where we sell now) and savored the moseying pace of it all. I saw a couple of familiar vendors and visited with them a while, buying the most excellent blueberry cookies I really shouldn’t eat (but did anyway—I’m gluten-free now; another story for another time) and a wonderfully whimsical nesting star from the talented fiber artist who spins wool from her own carefully tended flocks. Filled with airy bits of dyed wool, it now hangs from a shepherd’s hook on the ridge and the house wrens pluck wisps from to soften their stick-pokey homes. It was good to connect, to be on the other side of the table, buying instead of selling and catching up on the local news. Back at the farm, I’d have a go at taming the shaggy lawn under a brilliantly blue sky and do some impulsive baking after I’d washed stray bits of grass from my hands. For reasons I don’t need to understand, all that helped me feel better, and bonus—I still had a week of vacation to go.

I don’t know what I was expecting from this long two-week stretch of time all to myself and I wonder if, on some random Thursday back at the office, I’ll have pangs of regrets for squandering too much of it. Best not to dwell on that now—there’s a bird feeder and raccoon party going on outside and a few more areas beneath the trees that need to be cleared. I’ll keep my orbit a bit wider around that nesting star so I don’t disturb the wren’s busy agenda. From my view on the deck, I could watch them for hours.

And when I get back to the office, I’ll do what I always do that first day on the job after a vacation—submit a request for the next one.