TOWNER, N.D. -- The weather has warmed up considerably in our neighborhood, making it feel like spring. That's an odd feeling for us in North Dakota as the solstice turns to spring, to have our actual weather match the officially designated season.
It makes the kids want to play catch and ride their bikes when they get off the school bus. It makes me feel like being outside, working in our shop where the inside temperature is perfectly synchronized with the outdoor temperature, and catching up on a few assorted projects that I started a while back.
When I say "a while back," it reminds me of when my dad used to say, "here the other day." In later years, he would say that and mom would remind him that "here the other day" usually meant anywhere from five months to 15 years ago in actual calendar time.
Time flies, I guess, and it usually flies faster and farther as we get older. It's the reason we look at our children's rate of growth and maturity in disbelief, and wonder how it could be that our friends are becoming grandparents and that we somehow received notice of a 25-year, or more, school reunion.
One of the projects I'd started "a while back" was to put some electric lights in a small pole building I had built years ago with the help of a couple passing neighbors and relatives. It's used mostly for storage, but I also have a horse pen and a hitching rail next to it, so it's become my tack shed and the place to keep our saddles out of the weather. Sometimes, we start out early with the horses, or ride late in the evening, so I figured a little illumination would be handy.
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I had an electrician run a line out and put an electric breaker panel in there ... five years ago? Here the other day. I went to the store and bought the things I would need -- switches, outlets, little blue boxes, lamp holders, wire and wire staples and wire nuts ... four years ago? Just here the other day.
Now, with this warm weather, I gathered up my pliers and screwdrivers and wire stripper and decided I was going to "let there be light" in our saddle shed. I'm no master electrician, but I am a ranch electrician. DIY is the acronym for us "do-it-yourself" types.
I can run wires out of a panel and put in some outlets and lights and simple switches. I can even do a three-way switch if I go to our shop that was wired by a real electrician, look at things and remind myself what to do with that extra red wire. My cardinal rule -- make double and triple sure the power is off on the start of the wire before I start messing with the end of the wire.
I gathered up my plastic bags of electrical pieces and parts from the hardware store that had been laying in that building for "a while now." I picked up the plastic bags and they disintegrated completely, dropping my new supplies on the ground.
I don't know what the rate of deterioration is on good petro chemical plastic. I'd always heard plastic would live on a lot longer than we do. Maybe the bags were sitting in the sunlight. Perhaps they had some biodegradable corn starch components. But, in any case, my period of procrastination outlasted the plastic.
The lights are now on and I have a new goal for my long list of other projects -- make sure to complete them faster than their plastic bags of supplies break down in the environment. It's not a high bar. We can do this.
