The Grass is Always Greener
Posted on April 24, 2008
Filed Under Anxiety, Blogroll, My Better Half, bitching and moaning, kids, parenting, suburban joys | 13 Comments
I should be posting something lovely and springfully poignant but it’s April vacation and the kids are up my ass, and My Better Half works from home, so he too is up my ass, and the cats and the dog and the two Siamese fighting fish are up my ass. And the second floor windows still need washing and the grass seed needs spreading and 5 yards of mulch will arrive any minute and require hours of back breaking toil, and there’s an entire tree laying in the side yard that was felled last weekend and left there to taunt me. MBH knows I will cave and chop it up and start dragging it off to the woods and rake up all the wood shavings and branches and mess. It’s just a matter of time. All this and the usual weekly toil that includes dishes and vacuuming and laundry and scrubbing the tub and preparing meals and buying pet food have been neglected for far too long and the dog hasn’t eaten for two days and the kids are sick of fish sticks and I’m not sure if I’m getting clean anymore when showering or just contracting foot fungus, and I’m quite sure that we’re all out of fresh underwear.
All day long the pets, the kids, MBH are in and out, in and out. Leaving a wake of dirt and hair and discarded shoes throughout the first floor. If everyone could just pick one pair of shoes to wear today instead of first trying a pair of crocs and then the sneakers and then the garden boots and then the flip flops and then second string sneakers only to end up, at some point, out on the sparse lawn in previously new, white socks, if the pets could agree to stop blowing their winter coats on every piece of furniture and beneath the piano and on the bathroom rugs, if O and G could notice the filth on their hands each time they dash out and bounce the basketball a few times and dash back in to get a glass of water or use the bathroom or go pilfering in the refrigerator, leaving dirty finger trails on walls and door jambs and window panes, and if the f-ing beech trees that line the driveway could just once and for all release the dead brittle leaves of Winter and stop sort of dribbling them out on the lawn and in the garden beds that I spent four hours last Sunday raking and cleaning and preparing for spring only to find it needed raking and cleaning and preparing for spring all over again after one stiff breeze, then I might feel like embracing this early summer. But right now, it’s just feeling like gleeful freedom for most but tedious servitude for me. Have I mentioned that seasonal changes induce to-do list panic and high-level anxiety for task oriented people like myself? You may have allergies but I have mental illness. So there.
And I feel like this unseasonably warm weather has caught me with my pants down so to speak. It’s bare feet and tank top warm and I haven’t had a pedicure since last August and my summer clothes are still at the back of the cedar closet. Every morning I climb the stairs to the attic to retrieve a pair of shorts for O to wear. You’d think I’d just drag the whole box of shorts down to the second floor and arrange them in his bureau drawer but I’m afraid such a bold gesture will incite the wrath of Mother Nature. She can be so spiteful and mean, ushering in late April snow storms just to mess with over-efficient mothers who have prematurely mothballed the winter hats and mittens. So as a precaution, I take each short sleeved shirt, each flouncy spring skirt from it’s winter storage, one item at a time, until it’s safe to assume that Winter is but a distant memory. And I’m kind of missing it, the blank, boring nothingness of a winter afternoon spent sipping tea and dreaming of sunshine. Remind me of this longing next February when I bitch about the intolerable last stretch of cold. Remind me that the grass is always greener and greener grass means lime and fertilizer and mowing and leaf blowers and incredible amounts of yard maintenance.
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