Three Ring Circus
Sunday was a three-ring circus around here.
The farrier pulled in to shoe an uncooperative horse.
My brother, Roger, stopped in to make progress on tearing down the bunkhouse roof so we can rebuild it.
My friends came for a weekend of scraping and priming my 1906 Grandma’s House that has needed new paint for about 10 years.
Change was in the air.
I bounced among all of these projects like a clown in a bumper car.
I had been watching the bunkhouse roof sag for years. In fact, it needed help when we moved in 14 years ago. We were stone-broke then so my husband, Steve, spread a tarp across the worst leaky portion and held it down with an old bed springs and a few tires.
He did a good job, but the tarp deteriorated about three years ago.
Ever since, I’ve been thinking about how and when to tackle that caving-in roof.
Last Thursday, Roger and I took a look.
I was ready to pull the bed springs down and screw tin over the top of everything.
Roger said we better take the rotten pieces out first.
As usual, he was right.
We spent the day figuring out how to take out portions of the roof without causing the rest of it to land on us.
We were in the groove.
Momentum was finally on our side.
That night, Ginette called to say she and her son, Trystan, had three days devoted to painting. They would be here Saturday night.
On my to-do list, painting falls below grading my driveway. Anyone who has driven to my house knows how far down on my list that job sits.
Still, Grandma’s House, like the bunkhouse, could not wait much longer.
Two more people would get the tedious job done three times faster.
My weekend plans juggled from the roofless bunkhouse to the weathered old house.
Meanwhile, sweat dripped off the farrier’s chin as he worked to trim my doped horse’s hind feet.
Previous trauma obviously swarmed the horse’s mind, causing angst for both of them.
Whenever change is in the air, my best strategy is to sit down, observe and assess the best action, then put my head down and charge ahead.
But as a clown-in-the-bumper-car, my head swiveled erratically.
By lunchtime, the horse was back in the corral. Roger had his chainsaw roaring and Ginette had paint on the tip of her nose.
For some reason, Thomas Friedman’s book, Thank You for Being Late, came to mind.
Friedman talked about how humans can only handle so much change before unconscious reactions to stress appear. When the rate of change becomes too fast, people walk the tightrope of adaptation, balancing the known with the unknown.
Anger, suspicion, distrust and cynicism abound.
Friedman used technology, globalization and climate change as examples of rapid change, but it isn’t hard to think of others.
My personal three-ring circus was a micronism of the speed-of-light rate of change throughout our world.
No wonder people are acting so goofy. None of us knows how long that tightrope stretches, but we know our balance stick is weighted on the uncertain end.
On Sunday, as my friends and family gave me so many gifts to juggle, gratitude alleviated the stress of my swiveling head.
The horse is probably a lost cause.
We got a little further on the bunkhouse and we made major headway on Grandma’s House.
If you stop by the ranch, don’t worry about the driveway. Just aim for the bridge, don’t drive on the grass and know that you will come out of that pothole if you just floor the gas pedal.
I’ll change that eventually.