Misconceptions from my childhood...

So as I was blow drying my hair the other day I looked at the tag on my hair-dryer and remembered how confused I was when I was little by those tags.

The tag says DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG. WARN CHILDREN OF THE RISK OF DEATH BY ELECTRICAL SHOCK. So when I was a kid and read that tag, I somehow thought that if you removed that tag, you would receive a fatal electrical shock. Why would they word it that way? I'm 33, closing in on 34, and I've still never removed a hair-dryer tag, just in case.

Remembering that made me think of some of the other things that used to confuse me, or that I didn't figure out until I was much older than I should have been.

Did anyone else ever wonder about the tags on mattresses and pillows too? Why is it that removing a tag from a mattress is an offense punishable by the threat of jail time, but you get arrested for driving drunk, and you most likely won't ever see the inside of a jail cell? Really? I wonder what that conversation is like on Cell Block D in Leavenworth... "What are you in for man?" "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die, you?" "I went into a store and tore the tags off of 3 mattresses and a dozen pillows." "That's hard core, man."

Who polices that? I know for a fact that the abundance of drugs, gangs, and domestic violence in combination with your run of the mill barking dog complaints, speeders and the aforementioned drunk drivers keep my husband so busy that he rarely has time to do unannounced mattress and pillow checks on the unsuspecting residents of Everson and Nooksack. So who enforces that? Do they have to obtain a warrant to check for mattress tags? I remember one time, I got a wild hair and decided that I was going to tear a tag off, and it was so firmly attached on there that I couldn't tear it off. I gave up after a few fruitless tugs. I guess I wasn't that committed to it, or fate was stepping in and preventing me from recklessly breaking the law like that, and sparing me from further uncomfortable questions during my pre-employment polygraph for the Blaine Police Department. I wonder if that would be a deal breaker...

Anyone else ever have their mother tell them, "Always wear clean underwear in case you have an accident?" If my mother had worded it, "In case you're in an accident," I probably would have figured that out before I was 16 years old. I always thought, "How stupid is that?" Because an accident is wetting your pants, right? So what does it matter if they are clean or not to begin with? Sadly, I really was probably somewhere around the age of 16 before that clicked in my head. I heard it said again, and it finally made sense.

Another one, and this is probably a Christianson Family exclusive, is the word "Bink." Even my computer's spell-checker is underlining that word in red telling me that it isn't a word. When my sister and I were little, we always got our fingernails "binked" by my father. Apparently that came from the sound that the fingernail clippers make when you clip a nail. My father would say "bink, bink" with each nail, and it became a word in our family. We'd always ask, "Papa, will you bink my nails?"

This one is even sadder because I think I was 19 before I realized that it wasn't a real word and that not everyone knew what binking meant. I took my cat, Tiger, to the vet and he was going to have to stay for a few hours and have some stuff done, and I think he was being sedated. So I asked, "Would you bink his nails while he's here?" And even though the receptionist looked a little confused, I guess she got the gist of what I meant, and sure enough, when I picked Tiger up his nails were very nicely binked.

It finally dawned on me that "bink" was not actually a verb and that most people didn't know what it was. That was definitely not my proudest day.

However, even armed with the knowledge that bink is not a real verb, I have continued to use it as such, and have decided that instead of modifying my behavior and using the actual term for clipping one's nails, I have made it my mission to enlighten the greater world around me to the wonderful word that I grew up with.

Garden Wars Episode I... Green Thumb vs. Couch Potato

Last year I decided to try gardening. I had tinkered with a few spices in pots and flower beds the year before, but without much success because they didn't have any afternoon sun. Last year I thought, "What the heck?" So I brought home the sod cutter and a roto-tiller from work, and Matt and I took up a section of lawn that got lots of afternoon sun, and we went to work. I brought home bags of steer manure and having already returned the tiller to the store, I mixed it in with a shovel and a rake.

Having completed that, I was ready to start planting. I was ambitious... I planted garlic, cucumbers, broccoli, delicata squash, snap peas, spinach, tomatoes, strawberries, basil, cilantro, rosemary, and lavendar (not to eat, just 'cause I like it.) I started everything from starts, I didn't think I was ready for the responsibility of seeds. I found that I really enjoyed working in my garden, but it was SO hot last summer that most of my peas died, and I didn't like pulling weeds in that heat. And I wasn't super stellar at that whole watering thing.

I was amazed at my level of gardening success given my usual propensity for murdering helpless plants. I grew well over 40 pounds of tomatoes last summer and made over a dozen quarts of salsa. Pretty good for someone who doesn't even like tomatoes...

I harvested a number of delicata squash from my plants, much to my delight. I made cream of broccoli soup with fresh broccoli from MY garden... it was a very proud moment for me.

I was surprised to discover that I was fairly good at this gardening thing, and felt very rewarded by it.

Then fall came. I harvested the rest of my squash, and then never looked back at my garden. And then came the attack of the weeds. They were stealthy, they crept in a few at a time, and even though I knew they were there, I didn't realize how strong their presence had become.

My strawberry plants were (I thought) the only plants that survived the winter. I thought, "I'll go pull the weeds around them, and then get ready to start over." That was 2 months ago, when it wasn't such a jungle out there. I went out today ready to do battle. I had my gloves, and my scuffle hoe (also known as a Dutch Hoe, which leads to MANY MANY jokes, but I digress...) and I thought, "Ok, I'll spend an hour or so pulling these weeds."

Then I made it across the lawn to the wild weed patch where my garden used to be. My prized garden, the object of my affection last summer, was now completely grown over with grass, and weeds and my strawberry plants mixed in for good measure. I started yanking out handfuls of grass and weeds and chucking them into the wheelbarrow. After 5-10 minutes of this I had cleared approximately a 1' x 2' area. I was also feeling shaky and all-around yucky. So I came back inside to lie down for a few minutes. Then after some cheerios and a nice chat with the lady from the Census bureau I decided to go back out there and try again. This time I was armed with ear plugs and my weed-eater. I decided to knock down most of the tall grass and weeds and leave the area where most of my strawberries are alone. I loaded up the wheelbarrow again with cut grass and weeds. I raked, and pulled handfuls of weeds and grass, and started thinking, "Maybe my strawberry plants just aren't worth it..."

So, it's now been almost a week since I started this post, and I haven't been back out to the garden, but as I was writing this last weekend, I was starting to remember how much I loved the results of my garden last year and that maybe, just maybe, the strawberry plants were worth the effort. I loved going out and clipping some fresh basil when I needed it, or having my all day salsa making fest with Robbie using 25 pounds of tomatoes that I grew all by myself. And as I thought more and more about it, I decided that I did want to reclaim my garden and grow more stuff this year.

It remains to be seen if I'm going to get out there and continue the war against my weeds tomorrow afternoon, but I have the best of intentions. My best intentions never seem to be a match for my couch potato tendency though...