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You know, sometimes it -

“Hey!  None of that!  Get to work over there!”

Crap.

An accounting monster has appeared on my doorstep and I am going to wrestle it.

It may take a day, or maybe three days, or even a week.  I don’t know.  I’ve never wrestled an accounting monster quite this large before, so I don’t know what to expect.

I’m warning you, I guess, that you may not hear much from me as I wrestle.  I’m already tired, going into this fight, and I just don’t know if I have the strength for both wrestling and writing.  The two sure sound good together, but I’m not so sure they actually go good together.

In the landscaping business in Oregon, work comes flooding in each spring like February was a dam that has finally burst.  In no time at all we will be overwhelmed, and I am trying to wrap my mind around this idea.  I need to be ready this year.  Because of the problems in my personal life, I have mentally sat out the last two years of work, coasting along, hoping that my business would survive.  But all businesses can coast for only so long.  It’s time to pedal, and I find myself wondering if I am up to the task.  My mindset has changed over the last couple of years, there’s no doubt about that.  The question is - is there still a landscaper willing to live inside my head?  Do I have the energy to design?  Can I make the rounds and play salesman? 

I think something stirred inside of me as I turned on the sprinklers in the nursery and watched the water spray out over the pots.  And I think something stirred in me as I imagined working up the garden.  I didn’t immediately envision it, fully grown and lush, as I once did, but something was there, I could feel it.

This entire spring promises to be quite a monster for me.  I think that’s what I’m trying to say.  More then just the accounting.  More then just wondering if I can do the job that I’ve done for the last fifteen years.  My whole life somehow feels like it needs to be sorted out this spring.  I have to decide what to hang onto and what to let go.  I am not all that different then the lost accounting.  I must be completely reentered, one keystroke at a time until I am whole again.

So, I’ll write again when I can.

I’ll come out and play when my chores are done.

The day already feels like it has slipped past.  I have too much to do.  Well, Imaginary Keith has too much to do, but it’s busy work just bossing him around.  It eats up almost all of my time.

“Did you get the water running in the nursery?  Things looked dry.”

He assures me that half of the repairs have been made and the groundcovers are being watered, even as we speak.

“Susano is spraying, and the fuel tanks are ready to be filled.”

“You need a haircut,” I tell him.  “Go get a haircut and pick up another cellphone while you’re out.  Fernando will need one when he gets back.”

Imaginary Keith trudges off.  I don’t dare let him see the list of things he must complete before he goes to bed tonight.  He probably has some fancy notion that he’ll work until five or six and then sit back and read for an hour or two.

He’s so naive.  I’ve pulled the same trick on him for fifteen years straight and he still falls for it, everytime.

Where’s Fernando?

The last word from him was a phone call more then a week ago.  “Me come on Monday,” he said, meaning that he would begin driving on that day.

But it’s a long way between here and there.  Much can happen on the road, especially when more then half of the trip is on roads you don’t dare break down on or even pull over to rest for fear of being robbed.  I have listened to Fernando’s life on the Mexican highway stories.  It is no romantic Route 66 tale.