The coffee grinder, rising like a phoenix...

Ironically, the very same week I conceded that my frequent and open expressions of gratitude are apparently annoying to some people, the coffee grinder fixed itself.

And if there was ever a time that I simply cannot repress my feelings of gratitude, this may be it.

A coffee grinder isn’t all that important, of course. And yet having it break seems like an inconvenience far out of proportion to the appliance itself, especially at 6:45 on a Tuesday morning. I had no ground coffee in the house, only whole beans. So without the grinder, there was no way to make coffee.

This development wasn’t completely unexpected. The grinder is almost ten years old, which is geriatric for an inexpensive electric kitchen appliance. And recently I’d noticed that it had been making sort of an irregular chucking noise when it was running. And I’m sure the fact that the particular kind of coffee I favor has a very high oil content doesn’t help when it comes to machine maintenance.

So I was disappointed but not shocked when it stopped working altogether on Tuesday morning. I took it apart and cleaned out each piece and reassembled it, but still, only a dry whirring sound rather than the reassuring roar of a successful coffee-grinding operation came out.

But the next morning, just on what felt like the most futile kind of whim, I turned the dial just one notch to the right, and it roared to life.

I have no idea why. I guess maybe it just needed a little vacation. This was a small thing, but there was something so satisfying about it because it left no room for ambiguity. The coffee grinder was working again, and I could have a fresh cup of coffee, and there were no further contingencies to address.

Meanwhile, other good things happened this week too. A family member who was expecting bad news on the medical front instead received news that was conditionally optimistic. The acute soreness left from my gum graft surgery last week began to subside. I finished my first small project for a new client and both of us were happy with the results.

The coffee grinder was probably the most trivial item on my entire list of problems earlier this week, and so my sense of delight when it inexplicably came back to life was probably somewhat out of proportion. But it was just so easily solved that I couldn’t help being pleased. Fresh coffee: a minor concern compared to health, pain relief or many other issues. But a fine reward nonetheless. And so once again I can’t refrain from expressing, yes, gratitude.

Creative cow-tending

Despite visual evidence and pastoral sonnets to the contrary, life in the barnyard is in fact never dull.

As I wrote about recently, the herd has grown. And for a while, it looked like my cow-feeding responsibilities would end as a result. Twelve animals, ranging in size from medium to extra-large, just seemed like too many for me to deal with every morning.

But then they were divided by fences into smaller groups, which made it a little less intimidating, and it turned out that I didn’t want to give up barnyard duty after all. So once again, since the beginning of last month, I’ve been out feeding the cows every morning before my daily run.

The feeding season started out well. This week has been challenging, though. I thought I’d developed a foolproof system, one that would work even with a sub-herd of six bovines following me as I trek through the mud to the barn. Adhering to the successful method I developed last winter, I climb up the outside ladder to the loft and throw down some haybales, which is supposed to divert the animals sufficiently that I can then slip in and out of the front of the barn without anyone following me as I pull out a few more bales.

But we have a new animal named Gretchen who is very large and a little bit pushy. Well, maybe that’s unfair. Pushy is a relative term, and when you’re Gretchen’s size, simply ever-so-slightly-leaning, or standing with the slightest bit of sideways motion, can make you seem pushy to someone less than one-tenth your weight. Anyway, Gretchen is clearly a grass-is-always-greener type of girl – quite literally, in this case. She dives in eagerly enough as I toss bales down from the loft, but somehow by the time I slog my way through the mud around to the front of the barn, she’s always right behind me, certain that whatever bales I’m about to pull out for the other herd are inherently superior to those that she was offered.

Other cows, assuming a creature who is both larger than they are and more interestingly colored (black and white as opposed to their uniform red coats) must know something they don’t, follow suit, and before I know it, I’m hemmed into the lower level of the barn, unable to push the gate back open because they are all standing too close to it. So I throw out some more bales, but because they are all in my way, the bales more or less bounce off their sides and land on the ground, directly in front of the barn door. So the cows stand there and eat, and I still can’t get out.

Yesterday I solved the problem by climbing over the barn gate rather than opening it, sliding into the few inches between Gretchen and the side of the barn, and slithering my way to freedom. This is a bad idea in any conditions, given that the space between a large animal and a wall is not where you most want to find yourself; and an even worse idea given the current mud conditions in the barnyard, where getting anywhere quickly – or, in this case, out of anywhere quickly – could present a problem to boots that can’t lift out of the ooze.

Today I solved it more creatively. When Gretchen and a few of her compatriots stood directly in front of the barn, I placed hay bales on their broad backs and let them roll off the other side. The animals turned toward the hay once it fell, and I made my escape.

It’s not a great solution, but in the barnyard, as in life, circumstances are ever changing. Within the next few weeks, the current configuration of animals is likely to change – some will be moved for breeding; others for weaning – and it will be less complicated when there isn’t such a high concentration of critters in any one place. The mud will turn to frozen ground, and that will make general navigation of the terrain easier as well. Moreover, Gretchen might wise up to the fact that there’s no difference between the bales I’m throwing down from the loft and those I’m trying to hoist out of the lower level, and then maybe she’ll eat contentedly near the loft and leave me to pass in and out of the front of the barn unobstructed.

Between the three, that last possibility is the one I’m least inclined to bet on. But it could happen. The grass may be always greener, but the hay is always….hay-colored. Maybe the animals will realize that. And if not, I’ll just keep finding new and creative ways to vault over them. Necessity is the mother of invention, and somehow, if need be, I’ll come up with a bovine circumnavigator of some kind before the winter ends.

Small problems, easy solutions

Some problems, as my father often says, have no solutions. Problems related to seemingly irresolvable disagreements between nations or religions; problems regarding interpersonal relationships. Problems at all points on the spectrum of grandness can potentially fall into this category.

Some problems have solutions, but reaching those solutions is an arduous process, with backsliding and frustration the norm as a seemingly viable and yet increasingly hard-to-reach goal becomes ever more elusive. Again, problems in this category may range from interpersonal to international.

Some problems, thank heavens, are easily solved. This was the case with Holly’s problem yesterday, but she seemed to be surprised that I thought so.

A classmate who is known to exhibit more than a little rowdiness from time to time – and by that I mean, of course, from the time the bus picks him up in the morning until the closing bell at school – asked on the morning bus ride to see a tiny treasure Holly was harboring. The treasure, unbeknownst to him, was a favorite Japanese eraser shaped like a mouse, yellow and white. Holly had put him into a tiny decorative box and made some tiny accessories for him: a minuscule toy, a paper cutout toothbrush, a cardboard fork and spoon.

Holly made what she thought was a safe bet. “I’ll let you see what’s in the box if you can stay quiet for the whole ride to school,” she told him on the bus that morning.

He impressed her by staying quiet, and so when they disembarked onto the school plaza, she made good on her promise, opening the box for him to peer at the little rubber toy mouse inside.

And then, through a series of motions I can’t quite picture and Holly couldn’t quite explain when she told me the story in tears several hours later, his hand flew up – Holly thinks he was waving to a friend – and he knocked the much-loved mouse through the steel wire fence separating the school plaza from the construction area abutting it. The mouse flew into a pile of dirt on the other side of the fence.

Holly made it all the way through the school day and home on the bus afterwards keeping silent about what had happened. Not until we were walking into the house did she say, “Mommy, I have to tell you something that happened that was kind of…sad.” Then the tears flowed as she told me the tale.

She looked amazed by what followed after I’d asked a few questions and reviewed a few details. “We can go back to the store and find another mouse,” I told her. “Or you can pick out a different kind of animal – I mean eraser – if you feel like that mouse was too special to replace.”

“Thank you!” she responded. “I didn’t think you’d say that.”

At the store, she decided for a species change: replacing Mouse would be a beige and white cow she named Benji. On the way out of the store, she thanked me again, still with a tinge of amazement in her voice that it had been that easy.

I explained to her my reasoning. “It wasn’t your fault you lost Mouse. At the same time, it wasn’t really the other child’s fault either. He was being sort of careless, but he wasn’t being mean or trying to hurt you, and you perceived that and didn’t make a fuss about it at school. You recognized that it wasn’t something worth causing a lot of turmoil over or getting adults involved. You also figured out that since Mouse flew into the construction zone, unless there had been a construction worker right nearby to help you, there really wasn’t anything that could be done about it. I’m proud of you for making good decisions about how to cope with the disappointment, and that’s why I want to do what I can to fix the situation.”

Also, I said to myself, Japanese erasers cost $1.25 each, which surely had some small influence over my magnanimity.

But still. Some problems can’t be solved. Some, including a handful of other schoolyard conflicts Holly has become enmeshed in over the past year or two, take a lot of work to solve. This one was easy. And out of gratitude for that simple fact, I was more than happy to do what I could.

Brownies diplomacy

My family got into a little fight on Sunday morning. I could try to come up with a more elegant word – a moment of dissension; a disagreement – but I prefer to just call it a little fight.

It began when my 11-year-old, Tim, finished breakfast and went upstairs to play a computer game. No computer games this morning, my husband Rick told him. Tim had been playing computer games almost all weekend. Rick was right: his eyes and his brain needed a change of pace.

Tim was not happy, and while he was protesting, Holly put on a DVD. Let’s take a break from all screen time, Rick decided. No computer; no video games; no DVDs; no TV. It’s Sunday morning, after all.

But Tim was still angry about it, so Rick tried to explain his viewpoint. You spend too much time at your computer, he said to Tim. You should play today. Spend some time outside.

The problem as I saw it was that Rick is not a good model of this behavior. I, on the other hand, am. I spend tons of time outside. In fact, to my mind it’s one of the best things about being self-employed, right up there with always being available when the school nurse calls. I go running; I go for walks; I take care of the barnyard animals; on a warm day I’ll even take my laptop out to the porch to work. Time outdoors is peppered throughout my working day.

Rick is not like that. He works at his desk all day. When he exercises, he uses the treadmill. During baseball and swimming season he spends plenty of time outdoors; at other times of year it’s not so much of a priority.

So even though I supported his Sunday-morning ban on computer and video time, I found it a little hypocritical. Instead, Rick talked to Tim about all the things he did outdoors as a boy: fishing, running through the woods; tag football and wiffle ball with his friends. “After church, we can go for a walk in the woods,” I suggested to Tim. But Rick argued that this was not the point. “It’s not about you organizing something for him to do,” Rick said. “The point is that he should find his own things to do. He shouldn’t rely on you to plan his recreational time any more than he should rely on his computer or his Xbox. Don’t organize a hike; let him find something to do himself.”

Holly, though initially disappointed when told she couldn’t watch a DVD, was already busy with something else. She doesn’t have the reliance Tim does on electronic entertainment. She likes DVDs and even kid-oriented computer games occasionally, but she’s just as happy to draw on her whiteboard or play school, which is what she was doing as Rick and I continued the debate with Tim.

To my surprise, the morning ended with Tim deciding to go to church with me – something he’s done maybe once or twice all fall – and Holly deciding to stay home and play, which is the opposite of what usually happens on Sunday mornings. At church, I had plenty of time for silent reflection. Though it wasn’t on the level of prayer, I silently reflected on my hope that my family could all just calm down a little as the day wore on and find some ground for harmony.

Inexplicably, that’s just what happened. We didn’t discuss it further or negotiate terms: who can use computers and video games and for how long; who has to engage in what outdoor activities; what rules cover children but not parents; what rules we can all agree to. No treaties were drafted, no pacts created. We just stopped talking about it.

And as the day wore on, everyone had fun. Holly invited a friend over; Tim went next door to visit his grandparents. But the best part of the day was in the late afternoon. I wanted to go for a run and told the kids I’d go up to the track rather than doing my usual neighborhood route if they wanted to bring their bikes up or play on the playground next to the track. Holly decided to come with me and do some biking; Tim then decided he’d come too. So while I ran, they took turns riding Holly’s bike and running behind it, and they goofed around together on the playground, and they played with the dog. We stayed for a half-hour and got some good outdoor time and some exercise. Everyone had fun.

So the day started with a little fight but ended with everyone happy. What I take from the experience is not only how well it all worked out but also how no big discussions or negotiations needed to take place. When Tim and I left for church, everyone was cross; when we returned, it had blown over.

It’s what I call brownies diplomacy, not to be confused with Amelia Bedelia diplomacy, named after the children’s book heroine who always resolves problems with her employers by baking them a tasty treat which reminds them how indispensable she is. When you bake a pan of brownies, the most important thing to do after you take them out of the oven is set them aside. If you try to cut them right away, they will crumble into a gooey mess. Put them aside for thirty minutes and they’ll slice up beautifully, chewy but not messy, warm but not too hot to eat.

And so with the family disagreement. Just set it aside to cool and all will be well. It worked this weekend. Some disagreements surely need to be resolved with words, with contracts and negotiations. Others just need to be left to cool. This was definitely one of the latter times, and we were all the better for recognizing it as such.