How Long Before We Get RUN OUTTA TOWN???

I have an agreement with my kids.

I get the front yard. I get my five little flowerbeds and my overgrown jungle of plants. I get the front door and the nice brick walk.











You get the back yard. Go nuts.

Our backyard is ridiculously big. It's one of the reasons why we bought this place, even though it was out of our price range. We suffered to pay for it. It's 60ft across and 120 front to back. Even better, it backs onto the next street's back yards, so I'm not looking into other people's windows. For me, a small woman who takes up a lot of space, it was the only way I could deal with town life. And I had a great place for my kids to play.

At the start of this summer it was going great. We worked out a plan for an awesome bike course out back, which included things like dryer vent hose and pipes and 2x4s to mark out a track --and no, I don't have a clue where all this crap came from; I am a junk magnet-- and we had an old tire and rim combo, because as I've said before you always need at least one of those, and we had an old bike frame half sunk in the ground for comedy...and not one but TWO plastic skeletons!! It's pure sick awesomeness, as the Boy says. We agreed that to keep it from looking like an abandoned scrap yard, I'd go around with the lawn mower and cut the outside of the track, and take the weedwacker to the track itself and shave it down to the roots. The inside of the track, we let grow.

In the meantime, we're in the process of getting our driveway paved. We felt like going another 4 grand into the hole...it has something to do with For Sale signs in the future and the possibility of going even deeper into the hole in order to live in a house with a bit more land attached to it...and a barn...

So we have to move the shed. It's plunked down at the far end of the driveway. It has to move into the yard.

Now you will learn something about the Love of My Life, the guy I've been kissing for 19 years, my man Jethro. He is a perfectionist. He's also a dangerous optimist. He really believes he can do it all and do it right. So, our cheap crappy little tin shed will be set on a lovely concrete pad.

Holy crap people. I know he's right. I know. I know that when the cheap crappy tin shed finally collapses, that a nice shed can be built on that spot. I know that it's bad to cut corners and do things the fast cheap crappy way. But Dammit, I also know that I can't operate that way. If I try to do it perfectly- anything- I get mired in details, I go all Attention Deficit Overload Disorder, and eventually get really pissed off that it's not perfect yet and walk away from the whole mess. To just get anything done, ever, I have to do things the cheap crappy way.

And that's why I am not allowed to use power tools.

So Jethro digs a 10x10ft hole in our backyard. And it's like, four feet deep. Where did the dirt go? To the other side of the yard. Where the kids are digging a new hole. To bury Mr Bones and Skeledude.

I don't see the result. I'm a visual person but I can't picture it. All I can see from the kitchen window is a frickin mess, because to top it all off, the weedwacker is on the fritz and my back's been too sore to push the lawn mower around. I'm looking at a huge pile of dirt, a field of weeds, a pile of brush, and a nice square hole.

Did I mention the brush pile? No? Well I kinda let things get outta control for a year or two. (It had to do with antidepressants eventually.) Plus after the Hellish But Necessary Renovation of 2005 Which I Still Can't Talk About, I didn't have the heart to take care of my trashed and ravaged back yard anymore.

Or the mental capacity. It occurs to me that I don't know what the hell to do with all of this.

If I lived on a farm, you see, I'd have a burn pile. I'd take the cut branches out behind the barn, far enough away to not, you know, burn the barn. I'd have a bunch of old rims in a circle most likely, because I'd need a purpose for all the rims I'd been collecting, and I'd set the branches there to dry up. After some time I'd mosey out and light it up and maybe stand there with a hose. Just in case. I could get a burn permit here in town. But why? The wood is GREEN. It won't burn. And I have no burn pile to leave it long enough to dry!

AAAUUGGGHH! I don't know how people live like this!

Anyways, good ol Jethro brought home three pickup truck loads full of gravel on Saturday. The gravel partially filled the hole. Now all we have to do is get a concrete truck in...oh good lord. (Although I do love watching a man work. And I think my Jethro looks mighty fine swinging a shovel.)

Oh, and also, my fence had to be taken down to get the truck in the yard. Now my darn dog keeps trying to run away.

Did I mention that the pickup truck was in the yard? We discovered last year with the piano that the truck fits between the house and the shed. The mirrors have to be folded in. But it goes with about an inch on each side to spare. Kid you not.

I told Jethro that I thought it was really studly and manly, the way he squeezed that great big pickup truck through that tight space. The man has got skills.

This morning the kids and I loaded up a truck load of branches and took it to the regional waste disposal. I got the truck out of the yard. Don't be surprised. I've been driving that thing for almost three years and haven't scratched it (not counting my escape from the hospital after visiting my pshrink) so I got some skills of my own.

I should have left the dang truck shoehorned in there so that nobody can look at my horrendous back yard. You know it's bad if even I am embarrassed by it.

Oh, and did I mention that Jethro also framed in a new front step too? My old step was sacrificed to the Hellish Renovation Which I Still Can't Talk About. I'm tripping over concete cribbing at the front door.

To top it all off, and I am not making this up, Jethro also decided it was time to change the locks on the house but so far has forgotten this detail on his way out the door every morning. So, at about 1 or 2am, he's out there knocking on the door of his own house, waiting for me to wiggle out from under my snoring cat so that I can open the door....

Eventually the Nice People of Affluencia will gather on our front yard in an angry mob, ready to run us outta here. It's only a matter of time, kids. Only a matter of time.