territory

For those of you who may not know him in person, Nature Boy is very alpha male. For him, the lines of feminine and masculine are very clearly drawn and never, ever, under any circumstances, will those lines intersect.

He takes providing for our family very seriously, what with all the hunting and the farming. I may provide all the health insurance for the family, but he's the one putting meat on the table. It's a very frontiersman kind of thing he has going.

He even patrols the borders of our land.

So tonight when he got a text from a friend that he had messed up someone's hunting when he took out the garbage, Nature Boy got a little pissy.

Apparently, this person thought he was hunting on the public land that is next to our property. In fact, he was on our land, which makes me uncomfortable because our kids play outside and we don't really monitor where they play that carefully because they know the boundaries of the property and they are careful. Goober never goes into the woods without his brother or sister with him and the kids know to dress in blaze orange and red when they go out during hunting season, but I was still a little perturbed that these idiots weren't paying any attention to the "no trespassing" signs we pasted all over the boundary line.

I just made a mental note to not let Goober play on that side of the driveway until hunting season was over. Not a problem.

Nature Boy, however, was livid. He let out a stream of obscenities and started pacing.

"They were in our land and they thought they were in the dump," he kept repeating, pausing every now and again to perch on the couch and indulge in a few nervous facial tics.

I just kept working on the computer, frantically trying to finish some Christmas gifts.

"He's not answering his phone."

"So text him," I suggested.

I hear some beeping coming from the family room downstairs.

"Nothing."

Thirty minutes of this goes by.

Finally, I hear him heave himself off the couch.

"I'm gonig over there," he said.

"I know," I replied. Because I did. I knew Nature Boy would not let this flagrant violation of our property rights go by without a fight.

So he's going over to this guy's house, ostensibly to talk to him about where the property lines are and where one can and cannot hunt in this neighborhood.

And yet, I can't feel more than a little hurt that he didn't just take my suggestion of just peeing on all the trees that make up the boundary line. Hell, it works for the other animals around here.

in the eye

Yesterday the Ubergoober was involved in some sort of altercation, very minor, that resulted in a scratched cornea for him. He's fine and recovering nicely, but he has a patch over his right eye to keep it protected.

He did not, however, appreciate our pirate jokes.

at that age

A few months ago, I noticed that my right knee was "acting up." You know, hurting if I left it bent for too long, aching when I walked up stairs and don't even mention jogging.

I was thinking that it might be residual from an ill-fated hurdles accident back when I was in junior high. Just for future generations, when you are only five-feet tall, trying to clear hurdles that are nearly as tall as you are is, well, poor planning to say the least.

So when I went to my doctor for my annual check-up, I brought it up.

She poked and prodded and examined and eventually just shook her head.

"What is it?" I asked, fearing the worst.

"I'm afraid you're just at that age," she said.

So I brought up a few of my other complaints, including some weird hormonal stuff, and the answer was pretty much the same each time.

Well, except the hormonal stuff. That she said she could give me a pill for, but at my age...

Right.

So it turns out I am getting older. My joints aren't working like they should, my reproductive system -- which has always been a sort of wild card in my health file -- is staging periodic revolts, and let's not even discuss my digestive system which can no longer handle any sort of oil or processed cheese anymore.

And yet, as I'm facing another birthday in a few weeks, I'm feeling better than I ever have. I am physically more healthy than I have been in years. I exercise regularly, I watch what I eat and I've given up caffeine and most processed foods. I feel more emotionally secure and mentally, well, I've learned a lot.

It's hard to reconcile that as good as I'm feeling in general, my body is starting to fail me. I'm still in my 30s. Firmly in my mid-30s, thank you very much. But I'm starting the downward slide.

Oh, well... at least I can pick up some good speed.

at the right time

I was talking to a friend today about our significant others and she made a comment that just struck a chord with me.

She said, "If I had met Bob fifteen years ago, I wouldn't have made it. But now, I just thank God I have him."

And she's right. She and Bob have been together for about three years now. This is her second marriage and his first. Fifteen years ago, he wasn't ready for marriage. Fifteen years ago, she wasn't either, but she did. Now, after a decade and a half of life experiences, they appreciate each other. The love each other. They can live together.

It's like that with Nature Boy and I, too. Fifteen years ago I was nowhere near ready for marriage, but I did anyway. Same with Nature Boy. I thought I wanted this urban-cosmopolitan lifestyle, but I found I didn't. I thought I wanted a man with vast intellectual prowess who could discuss literature and music long into the night. I thought I wanted romance.

Fifteen years ago, I was not ready for Nature Boy, the least romantic person ever.

Now I know that those stimulating intellectual discussions are not a substitute for useful skills like building a garage or tiling a floor. I know that romance is overrated and I'd rather have a heartfelt admission of love than sappy poetry. I know that when the chips are down, I want the guy who can clean up poop in the bathtub, and not the guy who can't even handle it when his wife has a pimple.

I know that in life, it's not how much he says he loves you, but how much he actually does.

Because flowers die, songs go silent and the first blush of love fades.

But that garage is forever.

a pair

If you ask Nature Boy, he will tell you that I am the driving force behind our vegetable insanity. According to him, it was all my idea. The massive kitchen garden, the quarter-acre pumpkin patch, the apple orchard... all me.

Well, I'll give him the apple orchard. That was my idea.

I maintain that the gardens... it was all Nature Boy.

The truth, however, is that we feed off each other. It all started about four years ago when we redid the landscaping around the house and repurposed a flower bed for my herbs.

"Think we could put some vegetables in there?" Nature Boy asked as I planted basil and oregano.

"Why not? We've got just about everything else."

So we tucked a few pepper plants, a couple crowns of rhubarb and some squash in with the lemon balm. It was successful, but not as successful as it could have been.

"You know, we've got a lot of yard here. We could probably put in a good size vegetable patch," Nature Boy said.

We walked around, found a likely spot and hunkered down with a fistful of gardening books from the library. We decided that a 20x24-foot plot would suit our needs admirably. The kids all put in requests for their favorite veggies. Ty wanted kohlrabi, Sammie wanted peas and Goober went for pumpkins. I started seeds inside, waiting anxiously for the frost to leave so we could dig up and start our vegetable adventure.

As soon as he could, Nature Boy fired up the skidsteer and started scraping back the topsoil, revealing a treasure of fieldstone underneath. We picked rocks and heaved stones, trying to make a hospitable home for our seedlines. When we finally had a good garden bed, I stepped back and looked around at our project.

"It seems a little bigger than we planned," I said.

Nature Boy shrugged. "Had to be done. The rocks were too big and I had to dig them out. We'll just have more room."

I wanted to say that he was just enjoying operating the heavy equipment and got carried away, but I kept my mouth shut.

So we had a 26x30-foot garden. Not a problem. We planted everything, we had a great harvest, we learned a few lessons. For example, the abbreviated growing season in northern Wisconsin is not good for melons. It is, however, perfect for beans. Also, pumpkins and winter squash that set out 20-foot vines have no place in an area where they don't have 20 feet to go.

To solve that problem, we decided not to try melons again and I requested a separate pumpkin patch. Nature Boy decided to grow corn. We agreed to the other's demands and come spring, the skidsteer was out and more ground was being cleared. Only this time I was driving and by the time I was done, we had a half-acre for corn. To be fair, I was only following Nature Boy's instructions. Which is also how we got the quarter-acre for the pumpkins.

"What have we done?" I whispered, looking at all the bare ground, waiting for seed.

But it all worked out. We sold enough corn out of our garage to pay for all the seeds for all the gardens and our jack o'lanterns were awesome, thanks to my special breed of white pumpkins.

So now we're making plans for next year. After a PBS special on gardens, Nature Boy is lusting after a big patch of potatoes.

"Just think, babe. We could have baby reds all summer. And those Yukon golds. They say you don't need real good soil to grow potatoes. We won't have to amend that much."

"I want to do blue ones!" I piped in, seeing his vision of mounds of potatoes. Hey, I'm Irish. You mention potatoes and I'm all over that. Famine be damned.

Then we went to the giant pumpkin festival in a nearby town. I fell in love.

"Blue pumpkins. I can grow blue pumpkins!" I said, dancing around the giant squash.

"We have to move the patch anyway. I want to make more room for corn. That's a good cash crop," Nature Boy said, mentally calculating acreage and seed and profit.

"Think of what we can get for my exotic pumpkins!" I said, looking at the prices for these strange veggies.

And so it began. One of us has an idea, the other one expands on it and we just go. I suppose it's good that we support each other's dreams and that our dreams keep us in gorgeous organic produce and that we have enough land to do all this.

But in a way, gardening is like childbirth. After a while you forget about the pain of having your body ripped apart as a small child forces its way through an opening that, although manufactured for the process, doesn't exatly work as smoothly as it could. And after a while you forget about all the pain of weeding, the backbreaking effort of picking rock and the picking and the freezing and the weeding.

Right now we're in that mode where we've forgotten all of the pain and we're making plans for next year's baby. I've even ordered my blue pumpkin seeds.

I'm just really happy that there aren't any vaginal stitches involved in gardening.

pondering

Am I the only woman who has a higher sex drive than my husband?

done

This weekend I had the rare opportunity to kidnap my nephew for an evening of babysitting. Baby G is fifteen months old and adorable. Seriously. He has this gorgeous red hair and the Goober wanted to take him trick or treating this year because Goober went as Harry Potter and Baby G would have been the perfect Ron Weasley because "he has orange hair, too!"

So... cute.

Baby G fell asleep right when we got home, so I was lulled into the false sense of security that a sleeping baby brings. This was going to be easy.

But then I didn't sleep. Because I was afraid he would wake up in the middle of the night. Because I was afraid I wouldn't hear him if he cried. And, even though we were staying with my parents, I was sure that all of us would miss his cries and there would be some sort of catastrophe and I would break my nephew and my sister would kill me. Because she could, you knjow. She's pretty crafty that way.

He didn't wake up until the respectable hour of 7:30 in the morning, though. Oddly enough, it was the Ubergoober who heard him first. He came into my bedroom to let me know that Baby G was awake and we should proably get him.

So we did. I liberated him from his crib, changed his diaper and prepared his bottle. Goober watched cartoons quietly until it was play time and then he was good enough to share his legos with his cousin. It was the cutest thing. At that moment, sitting on the couch, watching my son entertain this baby, I got a glimpse of what could have been. What life would be like if I would have had another baby.

And then it was brought into sharp focus. Baby G started crying about something. We couldn't find any food for him and once we did, it was somehow wrong. Then, for whatever reason, he decided he didn't like me anymore. Me. The bringer of dry diapers and warm bottles and Goldfish crackers.

I was frantic. I had forgotten this stage of babyhood. The walking, almost talking, always unhappy toddlerhood. When you know something is wrong, but you don't know what it is and you sure as hell don't know how to fix it. Where the kid is so cute, but you just don't know how to deal with this bundle of unhappiness.

It's the stage you forget about when you're dreaming of having another baby, even after you've had the parts that hold the baby in removed. I've always wondered what life would be like if we would have had another baby after the Goober and I was really wishing we would have had the chance.

But now, I'm not. Goober is in kindergarten now and he can do a lot by himself. He can brush his own teeth, he's housebroken, he's in school and I'm no longer forking over a king's ransom for day care. He can also entertain himself and I can do things without worrying that he's going to strangle himself with a cord that I didn't properly store or that he'll choke on something he found in the floor. He can get himself a snack and he knows what I will approve of.

It's really kind of freeing to be at this stage of life. Where I can take a shower whenever I want, where I can take my child to the art museum and not worry that he'll throw his juice at the paintings, where I can have an intelligent conversation with my kids about science and music and books. Until I spent the morning with my nephew I didn't realize how much I'm enjoying this stage of my life and how it's really not productive to wonder what might have been, especially since there's no way it can happen.

Of course, I may still have to borrow my nephew now and again to remind myself. Something tells me my sister won't have a problem with that.