Don't Look Out The Window

Before we get into this post, the title deserves some comment. 'Out of the Window' seems more correct but I've also read you should finish your piece and go back and just remove every 'Of' in the post because it's not correct. Let me know in your comments. We'll expect Paul to be the expert on this.  cm
I started the day by watching a short 30-minute movie about a man who moved to a rural New England community. He was wealthy, unattached and wanted to start a career as a writer. Everything was perfect in his life because he had removed his worries, had no remaining obligations, and by anyone's standards, he "had it made."
He sat down at the keyboard with a cup of coffee, looked out his window at an amazing landscape, cracked his knuckles, put his hands on the keyboard and then it happened, writer's block. He had to pull his hands back to his chest, sat back and stared out the window.
I got to thinking, "This is a really stupid movie for someone to be watching who needs to sit down and write a column."
All was not lost however; the man became involved in his community and got to know a few folks quite well. A few of his new-found friends had some real problems and he helped to resolve them. Unlike real life, it all got wrapped up in a neat package and delivered to the viewer to make them feel giddy about life.
I came upstairs, grabbed a glass of ice tea, sat down to my keyboard and then looked out my window. All I saw was grain bins and a landscape of brown and a sky of icy grey. My mind went to "scan mode," as my kids like to reference that state of my mind when I have about 10 different thought processes going at once.
This is a good example of it. I began wondering about the condition of the grain in those bins, has it changed in the last 10 days, how much lower can the market go, is it low enough yet for me to start selling? If I decide to sell, did I fix that hydraulic leak on the grain vac, and I hope it doesn't get too cold because I think my semi tractor still has No. 2 diesel in it. Oh yeah, the 4630 still has No. 2 in it also and I'll need that tractor to run my vac but I better first put the pto shaft on the new generator I just purchased. And so it goes.
The movie I had been watching reminded me of one of the movies that would get my wife's attention. Marilyn can get hooked pretty easily by movies. I'm not sure what it is that grabs her attention but it happens quickly. She's always been a really busy person who is perpetually "on a mission" but if she walks through a room with a TV playing a movie with, oh, I don't know, the right actor, or music playing, or theme or I don't exactly know what it is, she will stop in her tracks, watch for a moment and like a hungry bass looking at a doll fly, the film reels her in. She isn't just hooked, she swallows the hook.
We're now just past the holidays but she really likes the Hallmark channel especially at night when it gets close to Christmas. I can't seem to get into those kinds of movies because there aren't any cops arresting suspects with blurry faces in them. Yeah, when there are no football games, I'll watch the bad boys get arrested on Cops. I catch a certain amount of guff from the fairer sex here in the house for doing that.
But her films are a bit too predictable for me. I walked in one night near Christmas and found Marilyn watching a Hallmark film about a young doctor who had lost his wife to cancer just a few years prior. He had hired a live-in nanny and the doctor's little girls adored her. She was like a mother to the kids, was a gourmet chef, had rebuilt and painted the doctor's classic car sitting in the garage and she was about 6 foot tall and very attractive and she obviously adored the doctor as well.
I watched for about 30 seconds and said, "Let me guess, the doc hasn't noticed the good looking blond who can cook, sew, mother little girls and clean carburetors."
"Nope, not yet, but don't change the channel I'm going to watch this." Well, I sat down and as I predicted the doctor fell in love with his nanny at the end of the movie. I think it was the six layers of clear coat she put on the finish on the old Ford that finally got to him.
Well now, we're back to real life and must make it up as we go. It's January in Nebraska. Just don't look out the window.