While Gia and I were living in Portland, we spent any and all significant periods of free time travelling back to Atlanta to visit with family and friends. During these trips back to the durty durty, we grew accustomed to breakneck social schedules that would make presidential candidates whimper with exhaustion. We would return to Portland from “vacation” much more tired than when we left. One of the great things about living back in Atlanta is that we no longer feel that not-so-subtle pressure to squeeze every drop of potential face time out of every possible minute of the day.
Somehow this weekend’s scheduling got away from us and we were almost crushed by the weight of our own list of engagements. And as of Thursday, it looked like it was going to be a pretty quiet weekend. That’ll teach us to let our guard down.
On Friday, after I ate lunch with the Duke, I went home and tended to the yard. It was NOT a good day for me and machines. First, my iPod earphones piss me off more and more every time I use them. I love the iPod, but those stupid-ass little ear buds can go straight to hail. Maybe they aren’t designed for my ears. Maybe I’m putting them in wrong. Probably the latter. Regardless, they hurt while I’m wearing them and if I smile wrong they both come flying out like some cheek-activated ejector button was pressed. Solution: add another line to the “to buy” list.
The next inanimate object to eat my lunch was the nature eraser. I carried it to the end of the driveway, started it up, erased about 3 feet of edge and then, click, one of the trimmer cords ran out. For those of you who have never rewrapped the double cutting cord on a gas-powered trimmer, you have yet to be challenged. Law School? The Olympics? Cancer? Psshht. Trimmer cord. The great motor skills equalizer. After a half hour of wrapping and snagging and wrapping and slipping and wrapping and cussing and kicking air and wrapping and fuming and wrapping, I finished edging with little fanfare. This anticlimax led me straight to the lawnmower. Actually, the mower behaved normally, but it’s normal quirks coupled with my preexisting level of extreme frustration almost caused me to deteriorate into a teary-eyed mess. I’ll try to keep this simple:
One of the welds on the mower bag has broken, so the bag frame is not as solid as it one was. I’ve tried securing it with wire, but it’s not the same. The main symptom of the broken weld is that, when the bag is empty or near empty, it takes very little jostling to cause the bag to fall off. When the bag falls off, two things happen. First, the clippings spill, obviously. Second, for the couple of seconds until I kill the engine, the blade sprays clippings right into my eyeballs at 600mph.
Talk about infuriating. I’m getting mad just thinking about it. The yard desperately needs about 30 lbs of weed ‘n feed, but I knew it was supposed to rain this weekend, so I managed to hold off.
On Friday night we ate dinner with Ben and Alison. Ben grilled meat wrapped in meat and there were potatoes and salad as well. Most importantly, we watched Napoleon Dynamite, which the Geester and I had somehow missed up until then. We both enjoyed it thoroughly and, not surprisingly, have been quoting it incessantly ever since.
On Saturday morning, I loaded up the truck with the last two years’ rotting firewood scraps and took them to the Cobb County Vegetative Waste facility. It felt good to get all that crap out of the yard since most of it had turned into termite farms anyway. Saturday was also my mom’s birthday, so we headed out to their house and proceeded to whoop it up enough that we ended up sleeping there. Nice work.
We returned home Sunday, did some weekly cleaning, and then it was off to Brunch for Jeebus at Gia’s Aunt and Uncle’s house. Following a delicious and festive brunch (thanks, Jeebus!), Pam and Paul came over and we hung out for a couple hours. It was nice because the both of us together hadn’t seen the both of them together since … New Years … I think. We drank wine and ate snacks like some group of adults or something. I didn’t even pee my name on anything. After Pam and Paul left we went to Gia’s parents’ for dinner, from which we returned at 9:45, exhausted. And being exhausted is a horrible feeling to have on Sunday night. Despite going to bed right away, we are both very tired and cranky today. Weep for us. Our lives are so hard. WEEP!