Asking for It

(Blurry) Photo by Scotty

It is very hard (nearly impossible) for me to ask you for help.  I've always been like that.  No matter how hard things get for me, no matter how hard I have to work at something, no matter how much I wish I had some help, those things do not matter because when push comes to shove, I just keep my head down and push through because I don't even know how to ask for help.  (Honesty here:  My inability to ask you for help does not stop me from becoming so resentful that you have not offered to help ~ can't you see I'm suffering! ~ that I ultimately end up demanding your service in a most unkind, embittered way.  I'm awesome, obviously.)

It was Easter weekend when I started to see the light.  The day before Easter, I stopped at a thrift store.  I seriously needed a rolling pin, as the cheap plastic one I'd been using for 15 years finally broke.  So I hopped out the car, said "rolling pin" out loud, and walked into the store...where I found a perfect wooden rolling pin for 70 cents.  Hmmmm.....

Yesterday,  Tommy and I were at the grocery store picking up a few things (including new lightbulbs....$60 on lightbulbs!!!) and I was thinking about how I really wanted to clean out and organize the pantry in the kitchen and the food cupboard in the garage.  (Mission accomplished, by the way.)  I was also thinking about how I had read somewhere that bakeries will sometimes give away food storage buckets, if you ask.  If you ask.  So I did!  You would not believe what it took for me to ask, and she started out telling me no, we usually re-use those buckets, so I smiled and said thanks but then she said, "Well, let me look, because we might have an extra."  And she did!  So I now have a perfect food-quality bucket to store dried beans in the pantry.

My mom will ask you for help.  Except she's not really "asking", if you get my drift.  That woman knows how to get her needs met, let me tell you, I did not inherit this (annoying) trait from her.  And so we come to the table in the picture at the top.  On Easter, apparently buzzing from my rolling pin high the day before, I told my mom that I was looking for a small-ish table that would fit at the edge of my kitchen island.  I needed it to be lower than the counter, so that I could use it for kneading bread and rolling out doughs.  A plain, wooden table, please, that would be great.

She said she sees a lot of those around, and she'd keep her eyes peeled.  Thanks, ma!  Not an hour later, I turned the corner out of her dining room and found the perfect table in her front entry!  It sits behind the door when it opens, so who knows how long it was there before I noticed it? 

"That's it!  That's the table!"  I told her.  And I was so excited that, before I even thought twice, I bleated out, "Can I have that?"  Well, it turns out, I could have it.  I've used it every day since, too!  

It was rainy that day, and it was dark when we were leaving, so Erik said to just forget it and pick it up later.  But my brother, who was well-trained by my mom, followed me into the wet night and loaded it into the back of the van...without me even asking him to.  Love that guy!

Funny about my mom:  Before the table even left the house, she had it replaced with another smaller table, a rocking chair, and a dried flower arrangement.  Holy!  Could you imagine being able to "shop" in your own house like that?    Also:  I asked her where she got this table, and she said, "Oh, you wouldn't believe it...your Grandmother had it in that shed behind her house in Fremont!  It was covered with paint cans, so I asked her if I could take it.  I cleaned it all up, and put these new handles on the drawers!"

She's good.  Did I mention she is not shy to ask? 

Now.  Asking for help is not the same as asking for "stuff", but I do consider these small victories over the last couple of weeks to be a giant leap forward.  Shower me with riches, people.