The Perfect Tree

     In the corner stands our Christmas tree in its manicured, if miniature, majesty. I can practically look the angel tree topper in the eye. This tree tapers to a perfect point as if shaped in a giant pencil sharpener. All the ornaments match, unlike the early years of handmade ornaments made of popsicle sticks or gold painted macaroni, or all the mismatched ornaments I collected for my children at craft shows and dollar stores through the years. Rather than reflecting the beauty of the tree, those cheap ornaments reflected my children's interests at the time--cats, fishing, music etc. I bought those ornaments with the idea that they would hang them on their own trees when they left home. The youngest is 27. So far, no takers. I managed to drown out the memories of eggnog, Christmas carols and our children bickering as they fought over spindly branches to decorate, by streaming a Jim Gaffigan comedy video. I laughed until I cried--so I wouldn't cry.
     This year's Christmas tree is well shaped, but it is not perfect. The perfect tree has mismatched ornaments clumped together on spindly branches, hung by the sticky fingers of arguing children. Angels should not be on top of the tree, they should be around it.

Too Much of a Good Thing

    I have mentioned before how discouraging it is to announce a surgery, pregnancy, job loss, etc. and have some well meaning, but clueless, friend tell a horror story about the knee that never healed, 72 hour labor, or person that never again found a decent job, but an overly optimistic response is also discouraging. The happy stories of the miraculously fast recovery, two contraction delivery, or job that made someone a millionaire, are equally hard to hear. One of the kind couples who brought food in after my surgery, told me about a friend who was back at her office job two weeks after a double knee replacement. Well, good for her! I, on the other hand, still got tired from eating. Overly optimistic outcomes make you feel like you must be doing something wrong, like you are not trying hard enough.
     In my case, I had the same surgery with the same surgeon at the same hospital, and same rehab exercises, with two entirely different outcomes. The right knee was more stable, less bruised and swollen at two weeks than the left knee was at four months. The plan of God is not a one-size-fits-all formula. He has different outcomes for similar situations for purposes known only to Him. That is one of the reasons I find health breakthroughs so annoying. Even Christians get caught up in the health fads. If Facebook and Dr. Oz had been around during Israel's wilderness wanderings, they would have been touting the health benefits of the wood that purified the water at Marah. The healing power was not in the wood, it was in the purpose and power of God for that specific incident.
    So when I respond to someone's news like that mentioned above, I'm going to aim for realistic, middle ground encouragement. Even encouragement can be too much of a good thing. 

High Pain Threshold

      Having a high pain threshold has come in handy many times in my life--15 years of a dislocating kneecap, 3 unanesthetized childbirths, 25 years of chronic migraines, but sometimes that blessing is also a problem. I do not think I was born with high pain tolerance, I credit my knee with that. When I was nine years old, I was playing in a sawdust pit with a friend. She called me and I stood up and turned to her while my foot was still buried in the sawdust, tearing the knee tendons. In my home that was not the kind of event worth the price of a doctor visit, so I just learned to walk, or limp, it off. From that time until I had it surgically repaired at age 24, my kneecap would dislocate spontaneously when my leg straightened too much, like when running flat out. Kneecaps going AWOL can be an extremely painful process and I believe that is when I developed a my tolerance for pain.
     Physical therapists have been surprised that I am silent during procedures that make most of their clients groan. It is not that I cannot feel what they are doing, it is just not intense enough for me to rate it as pain. One deep tissue massage was painful enough for me to not seek to repeat it, but I had to be told that most patients scream. My obstetrician could not tell what stage of labor I was at because I was not making any noise (although I would have if I thought it would help). During the Botox injections I tried for migraine relief, it was not until the doctor was encouraging me as if I were in labor that I realized the process was supposed to be painful. And when I talk to people about having cortisone shots in my knees, I get the impression those are considered painful too.
     The problem aspect of my pain threshold was brought home to me after my recent knee replacement. A few days after release from the hospital while my husband was at church, I thought I was getting sick to my stomach. It was not until I was halfway through my rehab exercises that I realized what I was actually experiencing was knee pain. That left me with forty agonizing minutes to wait for the meds to kick in. Several days later I had to repeat the experience when I mistook pain for tiredness. I am thankful for the discomfort my condition has spared me, but there are times when not recognizing pain is a real pain.

Placement Dyslexia

     I believe there are many forms of dyslexia besides the mixing up of letters. I have an acquaintance who is directionally dyslexic, she cannot figure out how to get from one place to another unless she leaves from the same point of origin every time. To get to my house from the church, she would have to return home first because she only knows how to get to my house from hers. Another friend has recognition dyslexia, she cannot recognize close friends if she is in the car, even if they are honking and waving as they wait side by side at a stoplight. And I thought one of my sons was temperature dyslexic because he would head for school in five below temperatures in a T-shirt, but preferred wearing in a hoodie in 87 degree summer heat.
     My husband is placement dyslexic, he has unerring instinct for putting things in the wrong place. If he comes home from work with an oily aircraft part in his hand, he will instinctively set it on the table cloth so he won't get the wood table dirty. He will bypass ten coat hooks in the laundry room to hang his jacket on a dining room chair. If we are transporting food to a potluck, he will automatically set the juicy, greasy or elaborately garnished item on the sloping car seat instead of the flat car floor. Not only will that make the dish more likely to spill, but assures it will spill on the upholstered seat, which is hard to clean, instead of the floor mat, which I can easily replace. He picks up jars by the lid, and gets furious when the lid is not on tight, but it would not occur to him to pick up the jar instead.
     And although my husband will happily pet a strange dog or cat, he limits touching humans to me and a select group of female family members. It would never occur to Reed to hug a male family member. His only exception is when someone he knows is injured, in that case he somehow manages to touch that person wherever they are sore numerous times, male or female. But I probably should wrap this up, Reed has chosen to eat his cookies and milk on the small table holding the fifty Christmas letters I have just printed along with the stamped, addressed envelopes, and I want to make sure they don't get ruined the milky way. The placement could be worse though, he might have decided to eat them on my computer.
    

Honey Dues

     Although it is not clearly spelled out in our marriage contract, there are only a certain amount of "honey do" hours allotted to a wife per year.  Fortunately, any project that the husband considers essential, in my husband's case lawn mowing, watering, and snow removal, do not count against the honey-do allotment. It is the chores the wife considers necessary and the husband considers nuisance that count. For that reason, I try to spend my allotment as frugally as I spend money.  Raking is one of the necessary/nuisance no-mans-land areas in our marriage. Reed, my manic mower, would be happy to let leaves litter the lawn indefinitely. After all, soon snow will fall and no one will see the slimy, sodden blanket beneath the snowy surface. This year, he was even doing internet research to justify not raking. I am willing to help rake as long as he understands I am helping him with his job. Chores are kind of like nicknames, accepting it one time may mean being stuck with it for life. The last thing I want at this low energy era of my life is extra responsibility.
     This year I encouraged my husband to buy an attachment for the riding mower that would do the raking for him. Associating raking with using power tools might make it more manly or, at least, less time consuming. Less honey-do time consuming. I use a simple method to make dreaded chores, like housecleaning, go faster. I lower my standards. What is the least I can get by with doing and still make the house look good? I also have a low standard for raking. All I want is a two hour power sweep of the main drag. My all-or-nothing hubbie, who would be perfectly content leaving every leaf on the lawn, now requires every cranny of our half acre yard to be leafless. Admittedly, being meticulous is a good trait in an aircraft mechanic, but not when he's using my honey-do hours.
    Because his raking job took twice as long as I was hoping, I will be forced to remove a two hour project from my honey-do list. . .but wait, I can offset those hours because I let him by a new tool. Marriage may be a two way street, but it is a toll road. One way or another you have to pay the honey dues.

Repeal Reveal

     This year Montana voters have an opportunity to repeal election day voter registration which has been legal here for the past eight years. As an election judge, I feel same day registration further complicates the already complicated responsibilities of the election department's busiest day, slows processing and increases the likelihood of error. But my love for simplicity, efficiency and laziness aside, I think it is a bad idea because, for the most part, people who have somehow failed to notice hundreds of signs and radio and tv campaign ads are probably not people you want to vote anyway. Those against repeal say that taking away same day registration would deny people the right to vote, with particular emphasis on the elderly. Based on my experience working at polling places, the elderly are often the most committed voters. I have seen older couples hobble into the polling place when they could barely walk, vote seated because they could barely stand, and vote using the automark because they could barely see. They are not the people who forget about registering until election day. They are the people who respect the right to vote as the blood-bought privilege it is.
     It is true that there is only one day in which to vote at your polling place but, like Christmas, there is more to the season than one day. Absentee ballots were mailed out October 6th, allowing nearly a month to vote. I vote only absentee since redistricting moved my polling place seven miles away. Previously, if I knew I would be out of town on election day, I voted absentee at the election office. Since the Americans with Disabilities Act, we can vote in almost any form imaginable:

     Vote from home--absentee.
     Vote from your car. Two judges will come outside the polling place with a ballot.
     Vote seated. There are chairs, tables and privacy screens for those who need them.
     Vote by letting a friend help you mark your ballot.
     Vote by automark which is equipped with large print, braille, verbal prompting, even sip-n-puff voting for quadriplegics.

      The idea that repealing election day voter registration denies people the right to vote is like saying people who can't go to Black Friday sales are denied the right to Christmas shop. The election department was already well equipped to accommodate all those who wanted to vote before the same day registration mandate. Who it does accommodate are those rounding up busloads of students, minorities and welfare recipients that THEY want to vote--their way. If that assumption is offensive, it is not nearly as offensive as of those arranging the buses, who assume their passengers are too stupid or too lazy to vote without their help.

     

Fall Equi"not"

    Montana and the calendar are not always in sync with when the seasons are supposed to begin and end. Winter starts sooner and lasts longer than it's allotted three months, spring lops over into summer, making summer that much shorter. But fall, fall comes right on time, again not by the official calendar, but when I think it should, just after Labor Day. Fall comes when the scent of corn dogs has faded from the fairgrounds, when the sound of school bells or sirens remind me I actually have to slow down in school zones again, when the sun streaming in the window is a welcome friend, instead of the enemy I worked so hard to banish with shades during the summer.  Autumn in Montana is like biting into a sun sandwich, a thick warm slice of afternoon between refreshing layers of cold. The leaves change and so do I, from long sleeves in the morning to short sleeves in the afternoon and back to long sleeves again for the evening.
    Autumn is a perfect balance of beginnings and endings. The beginning of the school year, the end of summer vacation. The beginning of harvest, the end of growing season. Rest for the farmers and their fields, the trees and the grass, the parents whose children were home all summer.  Fall embodies the crunch of apples and leaves, the smell of smoke, the multi-colored splendor of the turning leaves juxtaposed with the muscle soreness of gathering up the deserters. According to calendar, today is the equinox, but I think autumn should begin wherever it falls.