Flying Under the Radar

The husband is going down to Missoula tomorrow to get the trailer he purchased accidentally. (I am still laughing.) I would love to go with him, but I have too much work to do here. I know that a lot of people think that I am a lady of leisure because I don’t have a “real job,” but I do have a “real job.” Tomorrow will be dedicated to podcast production and getting ready for my thread class on Tuesday. Oh, and paperwork and bookkeeping for the construction company.

We’ve been discussing the increased amount of flak and criticism I’ve been taking lately. Yesterday, a random stranger on the internet took me to task over a grammatical error in a Facebook post. The husband pointed out that he doesn’t have these problems because he flies completely under the radar.

We found him on the internet, but you wouldn’t know it was the husband unless you recognized his clothing, his truck, or his tattoos. One of his suppliers recently started selling a product through Home Depot. This supplier told us to order through them from now on, so yesterday, the husband and I sat down at the computer to navigate the process. We were looking at the product page, which features a video, and when I played the video, the husband said, “Hey, that’s me!” We both recognized his boots.

This morning, I looked at that supplier’s main website and discovered a much longer video with him in it.

I don’t expect to skate through life without being criticized, but my response to that criticism is going to depend on how important I think it is.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt

You don’t like what I am doing or how I am doing it? Feel free to do all the things I am doing but do them perfectly. I’ll be happy to cheer you on. 🎉

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The husband sorted out the heater issues in the greenhouse. We also took the shade cloth off the top—it was there because that was the easiest place to store it over the winter—and all of that, combined with yesterday’s abundant sunshine, made it nice and toasty inside. I expect seedlings to start popping up soon. The cucumber plants that Sarah gifted me are in there, as well as the Spokane Beauty apple tree I bought at the plant sale last year. It was still small enough that Susan said I should wait until this spring to plant it. I kept it in the garage all winter, which stays about 55F. Buds were starting to pop out, so I moved it to the greenhouse.

I am hoping to get some pruning time in this week. I don’t think I need to do much.

I cleaned the house yesterday. I think the massage, followed by all the moving and bending I did, helped my back considerably. Whatever muscles were seized up finally let go.