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Today I accomplished some catch up with myself.  Yesterday we were showered well with a late monsoon rain — a real soaker!  The adobes I had made for my newly forming front yard walkway were aged enough to survive it, but I sure got to see how and where the rain off of my gutterless roof pounds down on some of them.  Today I did some repair in those spots, adding stones for the rain to beat upon — and let it come!

The ground was wonderfully wet.  I could dig away anywhere I wanted to without hard caliche (in Arizona, a layer of soil in which the soil particles have been cemented together by lime) to stop my shovel and demand a hose soaking before I could have my way with it.  And today the clouds obscured the punishing sun.  I worked all day out there — and now I feel better.

Only twice did I have to detour my thoughts away from the negative patterns that can crop up so quickly — and so unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere.  When those thoughts came today I could do one of two things:  (1) say a simple prayer, and/or (2) redirect my thoughts to the next physical action required of my task.

It worked.  Then five times after I told myself, “That’s enough for today. Your body is tired.  There’s always tomorrow,” I perched my sweat soaked rubber work gloves on the handles of my upright shovel and hoe — after sunset.

Today I made a low three-leveled adobe wall out of bricks I had formed last spring that are too sandy to support much weight without breaking.  The wall encircles the exposed two sides of my north-east corner of my front yard.

Everywhere I work I am hell-bent on digging up gone-wild Bermuda grass trying to clear the soil for planting of something else.  There is no way to eliminate this (to me) terrible pest.  It has roots two feet deep, and with every rain sends out four to six foot runners with little rootlets along it every two inches.  Left on its own, with its tiny little (to me) obnoxious seeds, it takes over everywhere it is planted, and everywhere it can reach.  (One square foot of Bermuda grass, if chopped up very finely, can solidly seed an acre — great if you are bovine or equine!)

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I did have one solid thought as I worked away out there today, sweat pouring into my eyes despite my headband and the cloud cover above me.  This thought, once it appeared, could not be chased away.  Not that it matters, but it is now stuck like it is a part of me.

“What if there are basically two kinds of people in the world, one being whiners and the other being workers?”

As this thought popped up in my mind, like a slice of toast just cooked in the toaster, another slice of toast popped up right along side of it.  “My mother was a whiner and my father was a worker.”

I don’t think I ever heard my father whine.  I BARELY ever saw my mother work.  So there.

“What on earth does this mean?”  I ask myself.  “Useful information?”  I can’t at the moment begin to imagine what possible use this observation is to me — or to anyone else!

What I do know is that I WORKED my way through the 18 years of my childhood!  I have no idea what would have happened to me given how much my mother hated me and how intensely she did work at proving it (Oh!  I see.  She WORKED at abusing me!) if I had been a whiner instead of a worker.  Collapsing in a pitiful heap on the floor with one flick of her finger upon me, or one bash of her fist, or one smack of a belt would not have done me any good whatsoever!

So I guess I, along with all five of my siblings, inherited my father’s working genes!  (Who would have wanted HERS?)

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Which reminds me, part of what I have been doing this past week is sorting through my inventory of all the ‘things’ I have made with my hands that I cannot seem to ever sell.  Some I priced and will send up to North Dakota to my daughter who will take them to a November craft show she exhibits at every year.  Good riddance, STUFF!  I have given away heavy crocheted rugs I made, donated  a bunch more STUFF — and……..  More to go!  I am determined to find this STUFF I have made a home — freely given, most often welcomed!

But I also had the thought appear several times these past days that in long gone days I would have been a valuable asset to some tribe or another for my making-things abilities, drive, ambition and accomplishments.  Whatever happens to people like me, deprived as we are as a true place in the grand scheme of our survival in today’s American world?

I don’t get to be a making-things blessing as my genes have dictated.  I am not a square peg meant for a round hole, or vice verso.  I simply don’t have a slot at all!  I just carry these WORK genes, designed for survival of a whole crowd of people — in a different time, a different world, a different culture than the one I have obviously flopped into in my lifetime!

Well, that’s getting awfully close to being a whine — so I better quit before I go THAT far!

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