I noticed my wrists were sticking to my desk.

This was a gradual awareness. I spend almost all day at my desk and I don’t know precisely when it started, but I finally looked down because my wrists were undeniably sticky. I had used the wrist rest in front of my keyboard for ... well, forever, and I’d noticed there were a few rips in the fabric. This had apparently progressed, completely unnoticed, until the wrist rest had started to ooze some awful sticky substance, which was now stuck to my arm.

“How did this happen?” I asked myself.

I have a friend whose father was a hoarder. She described the process whereby the house slowly filled with his stuff. He would conquer one room and then, almost imperceptibly, move into the next room until one day, the family found they could no longer use the kitchen range because it was piled high with stuff.

“How does this happen?” I asked her.

I remember a trip across the country when my husband, Peter, and I came upon a mobile home, sitting by itself, completely covered in a faded blue tarp. I assumed the home was abandoned until I saw there was a light on. The light was kind of hard to see because all the windows were covered with the blue tarp.

“How do you get to the point where you are living under a blue tarp?” I asked Peter.

“Gradually,” he said. I think this is probably true.

I’m guessing there might have been a way to fix that roof that would have allowed the occupants to see out the windows. But they probably thought this would work for a little while. Then one day turned into two, two days turned into months and, after a while, they got used to it. Who needs curtains when all your windows are covered with a blue tarp?

I am spending more time in my house than ever before and it has caused me to notice things.

One morning I was waiting for my coffee to warm up and I got to looking at the poster we have hanging in the kitchen. The poster predates our marriage. I remember how I liked it when I first saw it -- a cheerful print of peppers in shades of red and green with the names of the peppers underneath. I took a good look at that poster for the first time in ages and realized there were no longer red and green peppers on it. All the peppers had faded to various shades of pale pink and baby blue. Furthermore, the frame had come unglued and there was a giant gap where there shouldn’t be. The whole thing looked dreadful, and it had been hanging there in plain sight for who knows how long without me noticing.

“Peter! The pepper poster looks awful!” Peter took a look at it.

“You’re right,” he agreed.

“How did this happen?”

I am replacing the pepper poster with a new poster of peppers. They are brightly colored and hopefully will stay that way for a few years.

In the meantime, I am looking around the house as if seeing a newly discovered land, trying to see what I no longer notice. (Why is there a box of cookies tucked behind my printer? Why are there peat pots stacked on the washing machine?) It is a revelation, looking at my house anew.

And it’s probably a good exercise. I’d like to do whatever I can to keep from waking up one morning and looking out on a blue tarp.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

My husband, Peter, is fascinated by hummingbirds.

This year has been a difficult year for hummingbird watching as there has been a lot of competition at the feeder. First, the ants wouldn’t leave it alone. Then a bear smashed the feeder to bits. Right after Peter replaced the feeder, wasps found it. Peter gave up for a while and took the feeder down, replacing it with a fancy wasp trap that worked surprisingly well. Wasps were lining up to commit suicide in this hive-shaped contraption that Peter filled with sweet liquid. I had to conclude that wasps are not very smart.

“Oh look! There are 200 of my dead companions all gathered together! This must be a great place to eat!”

Once the wasps were thinned out, the hummingbird feeder went back up, just in time for the annual migration of the Rufous hummingbirds. This is always an exciting time for Peter.

The Rufous is not a nice hummingbird -- and I don’t think hummingbirds are nice to begin with.

“If hummingbirds were 10 times bigger, we would hate them!” I tell Peter. He can’t disagree. From my highly unscientific observations, I would estimate that hummingbirds spend one-tenth of their time eating and the other nine-tenths trying to prevent other hummingbirds from eating.

The Rufous is even worse. The Rufous is marginally bigger than the other hummingbirds so, when they move in, they act like the Jets in “West Side Story” -- except they don’t even get along with one another. The Rufous snaps open its tailfeathers like a switchblade to scare the other birds away.

“I’m a big, bad bird!” the Rufous says, fanning its orange tail and looking tough. No one seems to get any eating done. It’s just a lot of posturing and fighting.

“Hummingbirds are dumb!” I tell Peter.

“Yeah, but they’re beautiful!” Peter says, looking at their shiny feathers and delicate beaks.

We have a long wire strung from our neighbors' shed to our house that we hang lights from. I would estimate there is room for 3,000 hummingbirds on that strand of wire but, according to hummingbird logic, more than one hummingbird on the line at a time is a crowd. They fight like mad for one particular spot on the wire while the rest of the space sits vacant.

“Hummingbirds are selfish!” I tell Peter.

“Yeah, but they’re acrobatic!” Peter says, watching them dip and dive to drive one another off the wire.

I’m sure someone smarter than me could explain what sort of evolutionary advantage all this fighting over nothing accomplishes. It seems utterly pointless. But, perhaps that’s how all fighting seems when looking at another species.

It is only as the sun is setting that the hummingbirds set aside their antisocial games. They seem to realize that if they are going to get anything to eat, they are going to have to do it before it gets dark. All the bravado and all the squabbling ends in the last moments of the day when they finally get down to business and take care of themselves.

For this brief period, right before hummingbird curfew, the hummingbirds forget their differences and sit together at the feeder -- nine at a time, side by side -- and suck down the nectar they will need to make it through the night.

“Better hurry up!” Peter says to the last stragglers. “Night’s coming!”

I think I know just how they feel.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

It’s my birthday this week.

This is not normally cause for a big celebration, and this year it is less than usual. Still, unlike my husband, Peter, I actually do celebrate my birthday. I don’t expect anyone else to celebrate -- although it’s nice to know my parents remember I was born and still seem to think it was a good thing.

But I’m puzzled by reports of people my age who have huge celebrations, or pout if they don’t get a party. My grandmother had a big party on her 100th birthday, and I think that’s an appropriate time for a “blow-out” (as she called it). Otherwise, I think the only person who has any reason to celebrate my birthday is me. It’s good to have been given another year.

This year, Peter asked, as he always does, what I wanted on my birthday. The choices were more limited than in the past, but that really didn’t matter. It’s fun to receive one unusual thing that makes me happy. One year, I asked Peter for a new toilet seat. Peter saw nothing wrong with the existing one (he wouldn’t!) but cheerfully replaced it on my birthday.

“Just don’t go telling everyone I got you a toilet seat for your birthday!” he said.

But now I have.

This year, my plans are less grandiose. I was thinking about cheese, specifically, a big pot of melted cheese. I know, the weather has been warm, but the idea of fresh fruit dunked in a vat of nice cheese sounded irresistible.

“Fondue,” I told Peter. “I’d like fondue for my birthday.”

“Hot oil or cheese?”

“Cheese -- good cheese!”

We ordered long forks and are all set. Peter is making cheese fondue.

I celebrate my birthday for the same reason I journal -- to keep track of where I am in life. Peter says it would be better just to forget about that, especially as we get older, but I disagree. I like to know where I am and where I’ve been. I think that might be more important this year than ever.

I probably get this from my mom. She’s kept a journal every day of her life since she was in college. She claims it is a profoundly dull document. She famously described it as “an uninterrupted record of every dental appointment I’ve ever had.”

But I know this is not strictly true because she does look things up to see what she was doing a year ago or five years ago on that date. She tells me, from time to time, about something she wrote a few years back.

“Oh! We were worried about you,” she’ll tell me. I had no idea my parents were worried, but her journal knew.

My daily journal rarely records anything as exciting as my dental appointments. Usually, I am just trying to figure stuff out, seeing where I am, where I’m going, noting what I’ve done and what I’d still like to do -- both in the near term and before I run out of time for good. Journaling reminds me of how much I have to be grateful for. Birthdays do the same thing.

As an afterthought, I ordered a dozen cupcakes. I didn’t figure a cake made much sense since there was no one to share it with, but I thought it might be fun to distribute cupcakes to friends and neighbors. I’m getting one dozen red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I’m having mine with a scoop of peppermint ice cream.

If that isn’t a blow-out, I don’t know what is.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION