It’s shoulder season again, although as I’ve said before, a more anatomically apt analogy for the moist, dark expanse between fall and winter would be “Perineum” Season.
No matter what you choose to call it — this several-week stretch can be particularly trying.
Obviously, there’s the wind and rain — and this year, an actual hurricane, thus presenting the rare albeit perfect opportunity to drive around town blasting the Scorpions’ “Here I am, Rock You Like a Hurricane” out the windows. The kids will be so embarrassed — serves them right.
Then, of course, we’ve got the waning daylight, although some of us have lived here long enough to no longer suffer the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder, itself a condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder-Disorder.
True, there’s Alaska Day to look forward to… which reminds me, I still need to figure out my costume (this year, I’m either going as Wally Hickel or Sexy Wally Hickel). And, of course, nothing pairs with dreariness like French fries. Damn, that’s a good combo.
But all things considered, especially factoring in the Yankees’ swift post-season elimination — the playoffs and World Series were going to be this month’s after-school activity — things are looking kind of bleak. It’s like we’ve transitioned from Oktoberfest to “Blah-toberfest” (which, thankfully, is also celebrated by gorging on beer and sausages).
Now, before I continue, let me qualify: things are tough everywhere — a lot tougher in most places, actually. For instance, I overheard my daughter’s little friend suggest playing family, “only let’s pretend we’re from a war-torn country and we have to sneak across the border with our babies.” You know a situation’s dire when a 7-year-old knows about it…and it has nothing to do with the wizarding world of Harry Potter.
Point is, relatively speaking we’ve hit a rough patch. And chances are it’s not going to end until it snows — and mark my words, it WILL snow. Invest in shovels and rock salt; I stake my reputation as a millionaire day-trader on it.
But if my decade in Alaska has taught me anything — aside from how to love salmon jerky — it’s techniques for overcoming stretches of doom and gloom. And I mean without intoxicants.
First and foremost, I remind myself of the old saying: When the going gets tough, the tough clean out the garage.
Oh, wait. I’m sorry, I mean “muck” out the garage. Real Alaskans don’t clean out anything — they “muck” it out (just like how Real Alaskans don’t get into a “fender-bender;” they “roll in the ditch.”)
You see, to live in Alaska is to accumulate muck — case in point, I regularly sweep our kitchen/dining area with a shop-vac — and in these dark times, a thorough mucking out can prove curiously satisfying. It’s like the emotional equivalent of Q-tipping your ears for the first time in months.
If your garage is anything like mine, this time of year finds it especially mucky after a summer’s use as everything from a woodshop to a garden nursery to a kiddie bicycle ER to a grown-up hangout when “My Little Pony” cartoons hijack the living room.
This year, I’m really going after it — not only mucking out current muck, but a whole bunch of back-muck, too. That rusty old wheelbarrow I keep banging my knees on but continue to hold onto with the intention of someday converting into a planter? I converted into a planter. Boom. All that extra scrap shelving that falls across the tracks every time the garage door opens? I made it into shelves — for that monster pile of jackets, and even scarier tangle of footwear growing like a forest across the steps. Trail, blazed.
I’m not simply rearranging junk, either. For the first time since I divested myself of every possession that didn’t fit into my half of our Subaru on the long drive up here from Brooklyn back in the summer of 2005 — including my entire collection of mix-tapes and a life-size stand-up cardboard cutout of Boba Fett — I find myself actually getting rid of things.
A partial list of items: an old microwave; a basketball backboard still in its original packaging (going to someone else’s garage); three different vacuum cleaners defunct in three different ways (hence cleaning the kitchen/dining areas with a shop-vac); a printer, a scanner and a fax machine (each separately); a printer, a scanner and a fax machine (all together in one dinosaurian hunk of plastic); a record player that cost half as much as the parts I’d need to fix it and a bargain-bin electric power washer that literally blew apart 15 minutes into use. Let me know if you want any of that stuff. Otherwise, I’m making it into planters.
Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is our garages can all stand a thorough mucking out now and again, and not only our actual garages — our metaphorical mental garages, as well.
And let’s not limit the cleansing power of mucking to garages, either.
When the going gets tough, the tough can also muck out the fridge; reorganize the cabinets; sweep the woodstove chimney; take in all the glass recycling; squeegee the gross blob of eagle poop off the kitchen window that’s been there since June; get in shape for ski season so they don’t almost pass out buckling up their boots; update their website… the list goes on.
Here’s one thing the tough don’t do: begin their day with a bag of doughnuts and a three-hour nap.
It’s good to remind myself of that from time to time.
