There's nothing more cathartic than ripping something up.

My family and I have lived in our current home about 4 years now. We have made several changes to it in terms of remodeling. Most of the work has been done on the inside, while the outside has barely changed. I love my house. I love the neighborhood, the people, the house and the yard. It's close to family, but not too close. It's big enough for the four of us, and our 3 dogs.

When Jason and I got married our deal was: I do the yard, and Jason does the house. That worked out well until he got sick. I remember when we lived at our first house, we had this neighbor who was from Korea. He was an absolute hoot! He was amazed that I would do the yard, and Jason cleaned the house. When I was pregnant with Jack, I continued to do the yard up until I delivered. I think I mowed the yard the weekend before Jack was born. Anyway. When I tied up the bags (I never made them too heavy since I was pregnant) I would leave them where they were until I was done. Then I would move them back around to the alley. When it became obvious to everyone that I was pregnant, I'd notice the bags would disappear and show up in the alley. I mentioned this to Jason one day after I'd finished thinking he'd come out and move the bags. He had no clue what I was talking about, so the next weekend he made sure he was in the den when I'd move around to the front. He noticed that when I'd turn my back and start mowing, our neighbor would quickly come around the corner and pick up the bags and move them around to the back.

Anyway, I digress. Today was mowing day. I didn't get to do it last weekend because we were out of town so it was looking quite scraggly. I needed to put out the fertilizer and weed preventer (I'm a little late so I hope it'll work), so I went ahead and did the yard. After I finished I went to work in our flowerbeds. One of the things I dislike about our house is the front flowerbeds. I hate the boxwood bushes that are on either end of our front. Every year we've been here when it's pruning season, I clip the heck out of them hoping they'll die (no such luck I'm afraid). I'll eventually get around to getting rid of them, but for right now I'm concentrating on other things. During my mowing ritual I tried to start the "Green Machine". What is the Green Machine you ask? It's a weed eater. It's not just any weed eater it's a 20 year old weed eater. I think Jason learned how to weed eat with it when he was 8 or something! Anyway, it has a lot of sentimental value (if you can say that about a yard tool) in his family. If it needed work on it, they'd take it in to get it fixed. However, the last time they took it in to fix it the people at the place said they couldn't because they didn't make parts for it anymore (that's how old it is). Anyway, 2 weeks ago Jason's dad came over and got it to start. I watched and started it myself that day just to make sure I could on my own. So today I followed the same routine. However, it wouldn't start. It got to the point where I was really pissed off at the stupid thing so I put it away and continued mowing.

So now, I'm back to my front flower beds. At one end we have these really annoying plants that remind me of Monkey Grass but it's a flowering plant. It basically spreads like nobody's business, which is why it reminds me of monkey grass. Well, I hate them. So I grabbed my trowel, shovel, Home Depot bucket, and shears and went around to those poor unsuspecting plants and proceeded to rip them up. Needless to say I got a good workout. But there's nothing more cathartic than ripping up something you really hate (basically taking out my anger at the weed eater on this poor plant). I did find that my anger dissipated with each plant that was ripped up. In the process I found some really great fishing worms that I helped back into the soil. When I saw those big, fat, juicy worms I thought, "Grandpa would've loved these suckers for fishing." But that's another story.