Speed Bumps of Life

Speed Bumps of Life

My expectations, great or otherwise, influence me every day of my life, and far more so than I like. If I think something is going to be easy to do, and it turns out to be the reverse, it can knock me for a loop. Normally, when I am loopy, I just blame my bong, but I can’t do that so easily with expectations.

Unless it’s a social event, in which case there are no bets to call off in the first place, expecting a piece of cake, and having it be fruitcake, makes for hard times. Expecting a job to go quickly, based on incorrect expectations, makes the job ten times worse because there is so much room for expansion in my head.

I can turn a gopher mound into Chimney Rock as quick as a toke, and like The Chimney, sometimes it’s hard to get back down from those lofty expectations. We’re not talking life-changing here, just day-changing. As I have always said, it’s not the big things that knock me down, it’s the little things.

I call them the speed bumps of life.

Take the South Orchard, please, as far away as you can. It’s a jungle in there, where only a few weeks ago, there was an orchard, complete with fruit trees and nine terraced rows awaiting 120 tomato plants.

As carefully as I have kept pace with the rest of my complex when it comes to the exploding weed population, I dropped the ball on the orchard. So when I went out there Monday afternoon, my thought had been that I would just knock this out, real quick-like, and go in and watch the Giants club the Cubs.

Wrong, again. Not about the Giants, but about “real quick-like.”

I obviously had the wrong tool, the weed-eater taking a back seat to a chainsaw, when I saw the weeds towering over my head. Was that a tree-sitter over there in that ryegrass? OK, maybe not that bad, but you get my drift.

I had to make two passes over everything, one at knee height, and a second one in the conventional manner; otherwise, the weeds choked the life out of the spinning head of the weed-eater. It was hot, I was thirsty and the law of diminishing returns reared its ugly head all too soon.

Or, in reality, not soon enough. When I returned to the scene yesterday, 24 hours later, expecting Godzilla, all I got was your garden variety lizard. I started by redoing a portion alongside the orchard, but still outside, and it went smoothly.

Encouraged, I went to the far end of the orchard, where I had done the prep work for the tomatoes, and started there. It was easy because I had already been there in March. Now I had a fine chunk already under wraps, and it was game on. 

I have about another hour or so to go today, but the rest is a mere formality, now that I have ironed out the logistics.

Do I learn from these experiences? I try to. When I told Gluten-Free Mama this morning, that I was doing some foundation work at SmallBoy’s spot that would take three days, I stopped myself.

“You know, three days…four? Or five! Whatever.”

You know?