Dirt and Sweat

    I am clearly in a funk, and not sure how to get out of it.  I don't write much when I'm happy, I'm not trying to get dialogue out of my head when I am happy.  When I am pissy I pour things out hoping to make room for the happy to come back.  I wish I ran.  I always think that if I liked to run I could go for a long run and clear my head.  Alas, I hate running.  I wish I was a shopper, I could go loose myself in a store and zone out but that's not me either.  If I were a guy I would go out and pick fights, punch out my frustration.
     I need dirt and sweat. I need to work myself hard enough to tire myself out.  I don't know if I found the gym or the gym found me, but it is as holy as any cathedral in my mind.  I can push and grunt and move weight til I feel better.  My favorite movie quote is from Legally Blond  "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't shoot their husbands, they just don't."   Elle Woods was on to something.  I work out to be a better mother and wife. I have a lot of mean in me.  I need to exercise my demons, its the only way they let me sleep.  Right now my steady work out just isn't enough.  I need dirt under my nails, an aching back, and sweat, lots and lots of sweat. 
    I raked leaves for four hours today.  I bagged twenty-two bags of leaves today, and it felt good.  I need to quiet my head, shut down all that is driving me mad.   My life feels out of control, no I don't know when I'm moving, no I don't know where I'm moving or if my husband will move with us.  This lack of control really sets me off.  So if I run out of leaves at my house, I may show up in your yard.  What I wouldn't give for a downed tree and an axe.
      Some of my happiest and most comforting memories are full of dirt and sweat.  I am six or seven years old walking barefoot down just plowed  rows of our garden.  I follow behind my Dad, he pokes planting holes in the top of the rows and I count out three seeds and drop them in then cover them with dirt.  It's hot and smells like fresh earth, and all is at peace in my life.  I am a fourteen year old girl and I work for my Dad surveying.  I have my own machete, I know how to sharpen it and what angle to swing it to cut a line through Louisiana thickets and briar patches.  We leave at day light and work til dusk.  It smells like tree bark, sweat, and hot musty air trapped in thick woods.  Saturdays are my favorite day of the week because I get to work and spend the day with my dad.  At the end of every work day I appreciate money and baths more than I ever thought I could, and all is at peace in my world.  I am a sixteen year old and I am at church during the summer, I am cutting the shrubs and hedges from around the church, raking and hauling off limbs.  Standing outside of the church knowing that its beauty, for most, is held on the inside where light streams through stained glass. But what I need most is the outside, the work, the feeling of sun burnt shoulders and a tiredness earned through hard work, and all is at peace in my world.
     Today I tackled my front yard, maybe tomorrow I will start on the back yard.  Maybe I'll sleep good tonight.  Maybe between the gym this morning, and the time spent cleaning out yet another closet, all added to the wondrous work of raking leaves maybe it's all enough to tire me out. 
     Thanks Dad for always letting me work with you, thank you for never treating me like a girl, thank you for letting me try to keep up with you.  Thank you for teaching me the value of dirt and sweat.  Sometimes the only way I can handle myself isn't by talking, it's by shutting out the world and working, thank you for showing me how.



It's Just One Summer in Phoenix...

   When Brad and I got married there wasn't much work to be found in Louisiana.  We got married on December twenty-ninth, and by April he was on his way to  a job in Phoenix, AZ.  I really didn't want him to go.  I was in school and had never thought about moving away from my family, but we were married and he was my new family.  So we talked and he told me "Just come on out here.  It's just one summer in Phoenix."  So I have been living one endless summer in Phoenix for ten years now.  I wouldn't go back and change the path we've been on.  We have had to rely on each other in a way I don't think we would have if we had stayed in Louisiana.   I have never regretted stepping into my one summer in Phoenix. 
      The end of Sweetness' job is here in Macon.  We've known since we got here that February 2012 would be the close of this chapter.  But I am having a really hard time because there doesn't seem to be a next page written.  We are living in limbo and it's very uncomfortable.  I have tried not to worry about where and when  we will be moving for most of our stay here.  But February is just two weeks away, I can hold the worry off no more.  Brad will close this job out, so he may be here as long as March, but then what?  We usually have somewhere to start thinking about moving to, hear of jobs, and have cities to look up on line and start learning about.  But I don't have a city to start piling hopes on to this time.  There aren't rumors of jobs in other parts of the US, there are only goodbyes being said to friends leaving for Canada.
      I am more than willing to move to Canada with my husband, that is not the problem.  The problem is the jobs going on aren't ones your family  comes with you to.  Brad tries to keep me from worrying, he told me "It's just a few months in Canada".  I can't hear that from him.  I want to stay in my summer in Phoenix.  I want to see him every night, pray and eat at the same dinner table, listen to him read bedtime stories to the kids and lay down next to him every night.  Our life is not a fairy tale, we fight, we get irritated with each other, but we joke that everything is just about perfect 92% of the time.  We are finally getting better at talking to each other, he can't be sent away now.  I am trying to concentrate on being thankful he has a good job in this terrible economy, but I am selfish and childish and I want what I want.  What I want is a home, no matter how big or small, no matter in what part of the world just as long as it holds my children and my husband we will be fine. 
     Everything in me is scared to death of "Just a few months in Canada".  What if that is how it starts?  He does one four or five month job, then gets sent to another temporary job again and again.  Yes I will see him every couple of weeks, but that a family does not make.  I can't see him every day, remind him to take his vitamins, fuss at him for not eating more vegetables and all the other things I like to do that annoy him.  He won't be here to make me go to sleep, check on noises in the night, or warm my feet up when it's cold.  Marriage is not a certificate or a box checked off on a form, it's a collection of mundane and ordinary shared moments that when all thrown together become wonderful.  My favorite times are Sunday afternoons in the summer sitting on the front porch talking with the kids, or when he puts the kids to bed a little early just so we can have a few more minutes of time alone.  How do you maintain that in two different countries? 
      I know I am borrowing trouble, as my mother would say,  but there aren't any other things to fill my hopes with.  I am extremely lucky to have the girlfriends I do, they listen, encourage and help me through this.  Two of them are living this with me right now, waiting to know where their husbands will go and what path their families will take.  I am struggling to keep the days going as normal as I can.  I'm cleaning out all of our house, getting ready.  Any day now Brad could tell me he's being sent or that we are all moving.  I feel as if I am pushed to the edge of a cliff  and I am blindfolded, I know I have to go over the edge, I am just waiting on fate to push and hoping the bottom isn't too far down.    Where ever we land I hope it is still summer, I hope the warmth of  Phoenix is still with us.  I am not ready to even try just a few months in Canada apart,  I need the that imaginary sun on my skin and my Sweetness by my side.