View from the North 40: Lessons from the middle ground

I have a long and successful track record of failing at productive introspection. My natural philosophy generator has two settings: ultra-pragmatic and ohmigawd(!).

It creates two types of responses the “whatever” and “life's too short for (insert curse word of your choice)” kind and the “life is over” and “what ___?!” (as in “what did I do?!” “what just happened?!” “what'd you do?!” and “what the (insert curse word of your choice)?!”) kind of thing.

I read something a while back that said true life-learning happens somewhere in the middle ground between those two responses. I've been working on a healthy change of perspective.

Exhibit A:

For many years I had a house cat who didn't like using the litterbox, but also didn't like the cold, so in winter she would ask to go out, then immediately high-tail it north to the heated shop to do her business in the dirty floor dry my father-in-law always had somewhere on the floor. So basically, she had a 2,800 square foot cat bathroom.

We have since taken over the shop and now have a shop cat. He doesn’t like using the designated, actual cat litterbox in the shop. But the good news — for him — is that he doesn’t totally hate the cold, so all winter long he trots south, past my house, to get to my barn to do his business.

It’s only a 1,700 square foot litterbox, but he’s content sacrificing 1,100 square feet of luxury for real dirt.

Lesson 1: This defines the word comeuppance in living color.

Lesson 2: It’s a chance for the cat and me to spend quality time together while I’m feeding horses.

Exhibit B:

I smashed my thumbnail Thanksgiving weekend. It hurt. I swore. Then I had to poke a hole in my thumbnail to relieve the pressure from the fluid built up under the nail. Just some basic, home-grown first aid. No probs. Got it handled.

Of course, one week later, the injured nail began splitting open, starting at the cuticle and running straight to the pressure-relief hole I drilled.

That cracked nail snagged on everything. I trimmed the edges, but the hole kept getting bigger. Finally, I remembered interviewing a doctor who said that the glue used to close wounds is just over-the-counter Super Glue. Yep. I was surprised, too, that it wasn’t some fancy shmancy surgical stuff.

I bought some glue and used it to fill the hole and reinforce the whole nail. First aid manicures don’t get any prettier than that.

And four weeks later, voila, the nail fell off anyway.

Lesson 3 normally would have been “whatever,” but my healthy lesson take-away comes from the sidebar scene:

The store I bought the glue from didn't have Super Glue — it was Krazy Glue — and my husband said, “There's no difference between Krazy and Super.”

All I could think was: “What? No difference between crazy and super? For real? I feel so much better about my life now. I’m, like, I'm ‘super’ human.”

Exhibit C:

Because our house building project got unexpectedly delayed and we couldn’t get moved into the new place before winter, we are spending another cold season in the single-wide mansion while it tries desperately not to die. The poor old mansion wasn’t supposed to have to last this long, so we are dealing with some issues as if we’re on an extended camping trip in a rugged cabin.

Most notably, when we returned home from Christmas abroad in southwestern Montana only to find that our sewer line had frozen, we resorted to using the bathroom in the heated shop.

It’s important to note, though, that the shop no longer has any interior walls — at all — so we have a vast and cavernous 2,800 square foot bathroom.

This sounds familiar.

Lesson 4: Life can bring you full circle in “super” ways.

Lesson 5: The situation gives the shop cat and I a chance to spend quality time in his house.

(Bonus: There’s no luxury mansion or high-rise suite in the world with a bathroom bigger than mine at [email protected].)