This winter has to be the longest winter on record, and Punxsuatawny Phil hasn’t given me much hope for an early spring. I’m beyond the point of cabin fever now. What comes after cabin fever; psych ward? Before I reach that stage, I decided to try to find ways to fool my mind into believing spring had finally arrived.
My first stop in my quest to find spring was, of course, the Internet. If you can’t find a cure for cabin fever on the Internet, where can you find it?
I found several web sites that had some workable solutions, but not all of them work for me.
Shopping…This idea always works. I could go on the Internet and buy three or four of those plastic, blow-up palm trees, a blue blanket to hang over my window, a sun lamp, a CD of spring birds and a fan.
Museums…I don’t think so. The only museum within a two hour driving distance is a tractor museum, and it’s closed during the winter. Not that I’d go even if it were open.
Rent Movies…No thanks. I’m not a movie watcher.
Read…I can do that…in my palm tree decorated room. I’ll just add a lounge chair to my room.
Play games…Aren’t I already doing that? I’m tricking my mind into believing it’s spring, remember?
Another web site suggested having a picnic in the living room. Woohoo! I can do better than that. I will have my new beach room!
In the next few days all the accessories I had ordered to create my beach room arrived so, I told The Frontiersman I had a great idea for a special dinner that would relieve my cabin fever, but I needed him to go to the lumber yard and buy a couple bags of sand. He knows better than to ask questions.
While he was gone, I hung the blue blanket over the window (sky), blew up the palm trees and placed them strategically around the room, placed the sun lamp on top of the tall bookcase, and the fan across the room. I placed a blanket on the floor and went to the kitchen to prepare our beach dinner.
I made macaroni salad and grilled hot dogs on the George Forman Grill.
The Frontiersman walked in with the bags of sand just as I had everything ready. I opened the bags and spread the sand on the carpet around the blanket. As I began putting the sand down, The Frontiersman’s eyes grew wider and wider.
“Have you thought about how you’re going to get all that sand out of the carpet?” he asked, trying to contain his astonishment.
“Get it out?” I asked in amazement. “I just figured out how to create a beach in the house. Why would I be thinking about how to get the sand out of the carpet this soon?”
In keeping with the spirit of the evening, we put on shorts and short sleeve shirts, cranked up the pellet stove, and turned on the birds’ CD. I put the food on paper plates and added pickles and potato chips. We had Diet Coke to drink.
We sat on our beach blanket, eating our beach food and enjoyed our palm trees, ‘sunshine’, ‘ocean breeze’ and spring birds. I’m sure I started to tan.
I tried to get The Frontiersman to play beach ball (balloons), with me after dinner, but I could tell by the look he gave me that he had humored me as much as he was going to.
After dinner, we sat on the ‘beach’ for a while, reading, and eventually went to bed.
The next morning, I came down stairs to make coffee and looked at my beach room. Somehow, it seemed like a better idea the night before.
How AM I going to get all that sand out of the carpet? Maybe we could just rip up the carpet and put down fake grass. Let’s see…how do I approach The Frontiersman with this idea?
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