Tag Archives: Ceiling fan

Seasonal Trade-Off

As a kid, did you ever trade your lunchbox Hostess cupcake for a classmate’s homemade cookies?

Then realized the chocolate chips were sneaky raisins. That your classmate’s mother considered sugar the devil’s invention.

Some of us seem destined for the short straw.

This month, though, we Hoosiers trade summer for autumn.

This flower child will miss petunias’ glorious, subtle fragrance. Hummingbirds and butterflies mooching off zinnias and cosmos. Hubby won’t miss mowing grass, but if the scent could be bottled, I’d buy 10.

If frost must clear out my flowers, fall’s show-off foliage more than makes up for the loss. Especially as I’ll be done with endless watering, weeding and feeding my gardens.

Instead, I’ll be raking, right? Seasonal trade-off.

And I gladly give up a hog farm’s stench on a 95-degree afternoon for fall’s clean crispness.

During summer, we don’t mess with coats or matching gloves. Also, we don’t lose them in three different places. During autumn, though, my old friend, last year’s parka, welcomes me warmly on chilly days.

Foodwise, I already miss sweet corn. I also miss potato salad, made with my mother’s recipe. She kept her signature dish in the same summer-only category as white shoes. I’ll probably do likewise.

During summer, I buy six kinds of fruit. To continue that during cold-weather months, however, requires a second mortgage. Weekly.

Still, who can reject fall’s trade-off? Apple crisp and caramel apples, or pumpkin pie and other yummy pumpkin spice foods? Plus, comfort food abounds.

Other seasonal trade-offs:

I’ll miss: nightly cicada concerts and fireflies’ light shows. Welcome: mosquitoes’ demise.

I’ll miss: sitting on restaurant patios. Welcome: sitting beside fireplaces.

I’ll miss: barbecue fragrances pervading my neighborhood. Welcome: woodsmoke that says, “I’m keeping someone warm.”

I’ll miss: our ceiling fan’s breezes at night. Welcome: quilts and flannel jammies.

I’ll miss: flip-flop freedom. Welcome: favorite boots.

I will happily exchange:

Flab-revealing tops for flannel shirts.

Fruit processing at 10:30 p.m. versus consuming it in a cobbler at 10:30 p.m.

Multiple daily baths to dispel sweat, bug spray and sunblock for single baths whose effects last more than an hour.

Unfortunately, we’ll trade air-conditioning costs for heating bills.

Still, doesn’t the seasonal trade-off seem fair?

Although good-for-us virtues, like those healthy cookies, lurk during both seasons, summer and fall taste good.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What seasonal exchanges will you make?

End-of-Summer Confusion

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Recently, my pastor, instead of dismissing the congregation after the benediction, seated us.

How could he? Everyone had closed their Bibles and grabbed their purses.

“We have a problem,” Pastor said.

A million-dollar error in our building project? Heresy in the articles of faith? The closing of Cracker Barrel?

He said, “We don’t know when summer’s over.”

For weeks, the church staff has trumpeted program changes in bulletin, website and email. Though Pastor performed the parental equivalent of holding our faces in his hands and articulating new schedules s-l-o-w-l-y, we’ve asked spouses. “Um, what time does church start?

Past decades, summer exited after Labor Day. As for equinoxes — spring never arrived in March, so why bow to September’s equinox for summer’s departure?

Opening school early has shaken our culture. Back-to-school sales start before the previous school year ends. Indiana’s General Assembly passed school-excuse legislation so county fair winners could participate in the state fair.

Once upon a time, children sent to bed during broad daylight assumed they’d committed major sin, or their parents suffered from psychosis. Now, kids consider such craziness normal. Soon, they’ll consider cleaning their rooms as natural as microwaving pizza bites. No wonder everyone worries about this generation.

This summer’s weather has reinforced bewilderment. Droughts during June fried Midwestern fields and gardens. Unheard-of July rains rescued us and produced bizarre green August lawns.

Early last week, night temperatures fell into the 40s. Before Labor Day, they soared into the 90s.

Should we rev up the air conditioner or the furnace this morning? How about this afternoon? This minute?

Covering all seasonal bases, we snuggle under blankets every night. Turn on air conditioning, start ceiling fans and open windows. No wonder we’re befuddled. We alternate hot chocolate and snow cones.

Besides all this, baseball, basketball, tennis, golf and football blare from screens. Aaaaugh!

Let’s switch from Daylight Savings Time now, instead of November — absorb maximum confusion like a sucker punch and be done with it!

Or next year, we could once again mark Labor Day as summer’s end. But 100-degree heat waves might bake us for two more months.

We’d be more confused than ever.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How do you handle summer’s supposed end?

OMG, It’s Monday! Prayer

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O Lord, it’s that time of year in Indiana when summer and Indian summer engage in a polite tug of war. Windows open or shut? Air conditioning or heat? Ceiling fan or extra blankets? Though when it comes to falling temperatures, OMG, the seasons might prove more polite than we are.

Dancing with the Wind

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Clutching my second grade reader, I watched cars and semis whiz past on the highway, but my school bus didn’t appear. Only my imagination kept me company.

My imagination and the wind. It swirled, breathing earthy spring smells and twittery bird songs.

What do you do when you’re seven years old with no agenda?

You dance with the wind, of course.

I skipped and leaped more like a spring calf than the ballerina twirling in my head.

The porch light went on. Mom poked her head out. “Honey, are you all right?”

What kind of question was that? “I’m dancing with the wind.”

“Oh. Okay. Just don’t get dirty.” Mom closed the door.

The wind and I resumed our dance until the bus arrived.

Eventually, I learned to keep my performances secret, though spring’s Chinook, as Laura Ingalls Wilder called it in The Long Winter, and I continued joyous rendezvous.

However, watching evil Miss Gulch of The Wizard of Oz during a cyclone gave me second thoughts about Mr. Wind.

My own stormy encounter at age 18 confirmed the wind’s erratic moods. Trees fell around my car, power lines sparked, and a nearby chimney exploded. Had the wind gotten up on the wrong side of the continent? Still, I loved its gentler caresses.

My husband never has understood my wind fetish. One sultry night during our early marriage, even the open window above our pillows didn’t cool me. I moved mine to the foot of the bed. Ah, the ecstasy of wind on my toes!

Hubby, who awoke to feet in his face, wasn’t ecstatic.

Ceiling fans help keep us together.

Lately, I’ve winced as the wind has powered trash cans and downspouts past my window. I don’t relish the prospect of spreading Weed & Feed^® mostly on me — and Rhode Island.

If we camp this spring, we and our camper may follow Miss Gulch to Oz.

At home, you might find me and my laptop in the bathtub, a refuge reminiscent of the tub where I once read to three antsy little children until an all-clear siren sounded. Thankfully, our bathtubs were/are of the literary variety.

Despite grown-up reservations, the wind still holds a fascination for me. The force that spins windmills like pinwheels recalls Jesus reminding rich, powerful Nicodemus that the wind — and God’s Spirit — are way beyond our control.

The spring wind still burgeons with life. Some dark, early morning, I’ll answer Chinook’s call. We’ll dance while no one watches, turns on a porch light, or calls the police.

Why do I want to dance with the wind? Possibly because my grandmother passed down her Native American heritage.

Her middle name was Zephyr.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you ever danced with the wind?