Rocks, Sea Salt & Robots

I have come to realize that the editor and I have an affinity for rocks. His relationship may have come from diving off a bridge in his late teens and meeting them headfirst. He has a nice scar across his forehead to remind us that even though he has a thick skull, the rocks win. Editor 0. Rocks 1.

We have spent the last 30 plus years gathering rocks for various projects. Our first big project was the foundation of our house. We dug, pried, gathered, and carted fieldstone for months. Lucky for us our land grows rock exceptionally well. No stone veneer foundation for us. No siree. If it was not at least eight inches thick, it wasn’t even considered.  There were plenty of smashed fingers in the process, but it was a labor of love and we wore them with pride. 

We liked landscaping with rock. It gave the place a sort of a Secret Garden feel—minus the climbing roses, but that would surely come later. The Editor had visions in his head and began to search for larger rock to terrace and to hinge. We were no longer digging and prying. We were carting them in on dump trucks and rollback wreckers.  The pile of rocks in the back yard was growing, but we could no longer move them. So that project got put on a back burner. Editor -1. Rocks 2.

To revive my Secret Garden dream or possibly to block my view of the monstrous rock pile in my back yard, the Editor planted wisteria. By now I have learned the only difference between wisteria and kudzoo is that willful hysteria has a better public relations team.  The Secret Garden is now an impenetrable fort showing itself to be willful and running in all directions in spite of our intentions (much like our grandbrats).

My love affair with rocks is waning—which explains my lackluster response upon seeing two pink rocks in the dishwasher this week. The editor is busily rewiring a couple of lamp bases as I push the start button to wash dishes. We chat about our day and the editor talks about these two lamps he found at a thrift store that will make great night lights and he has put the quartz rock globes in the dishwasher. Quartz rock. Lamps. Thrift Store. Something about that combination did not ring true as I jumped up to open the dishwasher. Me: “Babe, this isn’t quartz.” He: “Sure it is.” Me: “No, I’m pretty sure it’s a salt block.”  He’s not convinced. I lick it. Yep. It’s salty. He thinks I’m tasting the dust on the lamp. We look it up. Sure enough, the editor has two gen-u-wine Himalayan Pink Salt lamps that claim to improve the air quality of our home by attracting allergens, toxins and pollutants to their surface. And I licked that.  On hindsight, I should have left them to dissolve in the dishwasher to give the editor his opportunity to even the score. Editor 1 Rocks 0.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about letting go of the things you cannot control. I would miss the Editor, so I decided to focus on the things I could control, like the mess in our house. There’s some debate on that, too, but I try. On a whim, I bought a robot vacuum cleaner—not the high-end kind. More like the Datsun compared to the Ford kind. It works great as long as we pick up the floor first. For the first few runs we would sit and watch it, which sort of defeated the purpose. I scheduled “Rosie” to run every morning at 5:45 and she gently woke me up with her nudges on the furniture or because she was gagging on a straggling sock.

Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I upgraded to a Chevy version that I could connect to my phone. I thought Rosie 2.0 and I were bonding nicely, until mid-month when I got the message that my wi-fi hotspot was almost out of data. Those of us in the rural edges of the county know we must pace ourselves with our data. I could not imagine why I was out of data. We don’t stream videos. We don’t play games. I went through the house and turned off the laptop, my phone, my tablet, and still there was something unidentifiable connected to the wi-fi. That’s when I turned around and saw the Chevy’s charging eye looking at me as she quietly sucked up my last bit of internet faster than she sucks up trash. Management 0. Rosie 1.