My "can-do" attitude - a blessing and a curse

I've always had a can-do attitude. Other words used to describe this aspect of my personality include drive, determination, problem-solving, confidence, stubbornness, pride and self-righteousness. Notice how those terms gradually shifted from being admirable qualities to character flaws?

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Been there, done that. "Blessing" side.

This weekend was an example of the "curse" side. Ben was gone all weekend on a family ice-fishing trip. Not a huge deal. The only thing to arrange for him to be away was that someone needed to put wood in the outdoor wood burners that heats our house and my in-laws house (his dad was on the trip too).

We are so fortunate to have neighbors and friends who are willing to help out. He actually arranged for one of them to do the wood while he was away.

I just had to open my big mouth. I said I could do the wood - I didn't want to be the damsel in distress who needed a guy to take care of us. I could handle it.

Surely, I could. But did I really want to?

At the time I did. I like physical work and I really like being tough. I would much rather be doing physical work than housework. So it was a task I was happy to take on.

Four problems:

1. I had plenty of other tasks that also needed to be done without adding this.
2. It was bitterly cold the first couple days he was gone so now I volunteered to go out in that weather.
3. The logs are big. I could lift them, but it definitely got my heart rate up. My father-in-law actually scoured through his piles and found all the smaller pieces and stacked them neatly right by the burner. Not sure if he felt bad for me or doubted that I could do it. Either way, it was nice. 
4. I had to arrange doing all this twice a day in two locations while supervising two little kids who couldn't be alone in the house and it was too cold for them to be out with me. 

After a couple times doing it, time got away from me Friday night. I went out there at 11:30 p.m. and didn't see much sign of life to the fire. Even though Ben gave me all the instructions, he hadn't really told me how to get it going from pretty much nothing. It was too late to call anyone. I freaked out a little, put wood in and prayed it would start up. I stayed awake another hour to see if the water temperature rose at all, signaling that it had started. Nope. It dropped slightly.

Without anything else to do, I went to bed..at least I tried to. I was pretty worked up. My logic told me it would be a big deal to just call the neighbor and see if he could help get it going in the morning. The house temperature wouldn't drop that much overnight for there to be any serious problems. That was my logic, which proved to be correct.

What really kept me awake was my irritation that I had failed. Grrrr. My pride was hurting. A lot.

After stewing about it for a couple days, I finally processed the take-away silver lining. Now that I've accepted that maybe I don't want to put wood in, I conveniently have an "out." When you can't do the task well, then it's easier to have someone else do it. It's like various farm tasks growing up - we would purposely avoid learning some of the roles because then we couldn't be expected to do them. Since I didn't really succeed at learning to do the wood, I'm sure I can easily get out of it in the future.

Unless my "can-do" attitude gets the best of me again...

I love winter!

I <3 winter! It's the only season of the year when we have a normal, predictable family schedule.

Winter for us means January 1 (after the holiday craze) through the unknown date when they head out to the fields the first time in spring and don't come back for 2.5 months (slightly exaggerated, but not much).

Don't get me wrong, Ben is still really busy. As an entrepreneur/small business owner, there's always more that could be done. There's the mandatory list of broken equipment that needs a lot of TLC. With all the equipment it takes to farm 1,400 acres and the amount of hours the equipment runs during the year, it's a long list (especially this year). Ben and his dad do basically all maintenance and repairs themselves - it takes a lot of time but worth it for the cost savings. There's also the second list of things that would be really nice to do (usually modifications to fieldwork equipment), and they try to pick a couple off that list each year. Plus all the office work it takes to run a farm all gets done right now - taxes (bleh), informational seminars, purchasing all the inputs for the upcoming year, etc.

A few weeks ago Ben and I talked and actually set his work hours so that we are on the same page, versus just willy nilly every day. It's really nice to set your own schedule, but also really necessary so we can fully-utilize this family time. Now I know to expect him home around 5:30 to 5:45 so we can have dinner and some family time in the evening. Molly goes to bed at 6:30 (transitioning from two naps to one has been hard for her), so this way she always gets some daddy time before bed.

It's one of the bitter-sweet things about being a farmwife - we don't get much normal family time during the parts of the year when it would be nice to do outdoor activities, but yet it makes the dreary part of the year a whole lot sweeter.

Focusing on the "sweet" of the bitter-sweet right now.

Ice fishing on Pleasant Lake = winter family fun