How do you know it is Spring? At my house Spring comes around when you are busy with work, out of town a lot on the weekends and when it rains during the week but it sunny on the weekend. The weekends you are out of town, so that the grass grows high and you can't mow it. That's how it works for us. However, it clearly doesn't work that way for all of our neighbors. After a few weeks of this I started to slink out of the house in the mornings and hope no one was out to stop me and give me the Spanish Inquisition about the length of the lawn.
Just how long was my lawn? I think a couple of urban safaris went through looking for tigers in the last couple of weeks. Things are back on track, though. I spent the day outside not only mowing things back to their 4 inch length, but also weeding our plant strip*.
My neighborhood embarrassment isn't the only thing spurring this activity. In just under a week, friends are hosting a wedding shower at my house. It is one thing to look ghetto to people I don't know. People I barely know and rarely hang out with, now THEY are the people I need to impress. Or at least not shock.
In other news my mother visited us this weekend. She came mainly to get tech support for her laptop which was no longer working, but also because it was Mother's Day! Yay! She drove over from Spokansas Friday and we hung out. It was a really nice time. We kept it simple. Played a lot of games (including a major marble tournament at my sister's house) and had nice food. This morning the Hub asked for Mom's car keys to check her oil before she got on the road.
They were missing. Totally gone. We searched high and low, called the Sis's house, etc, etc. Since it was early and we hadn't had much sleep, tempers were high. Dad called to wish Mom a Happy Mother's Day and she TOLD HIM. Duh, why would you do that? So they had this big stressful conversation that consisted of my mom saying, "Yes, I looked there. I looked there. YES, I LOOKED THERE!" Then she did the thing, the ultimate thing. She mentioned that the set of keys that was lost had the one and ONLY gas cap key. Good lord, the sky fell in people. What was the point of that?
This is very uncharitable of me, but because I already knew I needed to spend the day in the yard and doing laundry I thought to myself, "Oh god. If those keys are gone, this is going to be one shitty day. One. Shitty. Day." Thank god we found them soon after that. Where? On the ground near the car. Since the last time Mom drove it was Friday that means they were on the ground the whole weekend. So we were not only lucky that Mom was able to go home without me killing her. We were also lucky that no one "borrowed" the car.
On another tangent, we also bought a new stove and dishwasher today. That we said we were going to buy last September. We are nothing if not tardy. We spent all this money on these fabulous models (come on people, like I know WHICH models we bought) and I am still totally bitchy. Why? Because they won't be here for over a WEEK. Which would be after the party next Saturday. So now I have to use my shitty half broken stove for the party. On the other hand, it is a really old stove with a second oven above the range. The previous owners of this house didn't think they should have to paint the kitchen wall behind the range. So if we got the new one before, we would have this tacky blue spot in an ocean of white.
*It just kills me how neat and tidy those pictures are. Those pictures are from two years ago. The strip I weeded today is the one connected to the yard. The parking strip is not just NOT neat and tidy like those pictures suggest, but also rabidly OVERGROWN. There are no gaps between plants. Jungle. This jungle still needs to be weeded and chopped back.
This is how you know it is way past time to do yard work. Neighbors walk past you while you are tugging weeds and ripping things out, generally red-faced and pissy.
Neighbor: "Nice day."
Me: "Beautiful."
N: "Sure got your work cut out for you."
Me: "Yup."
N: "If only those people living here before hadn't left you such a mess. So just when did you move in?"
Me: "Six years ago."
N: "_______"
Guess we won't be friends after all.
Posted by kerewin at May 14, 2006 09:06 PM