Every time I go through my garden photos I am amazed at how much it’s changed in the past 2 years. I see plants that gave me joy and have died. Plants that I forgot I even bought! I can see what I’ve changed around and there’s a lot of that. I also see the mistakes I made, some plantings of regret, now that things have grown fuller.
Here’s December 2006 on our final walkthrough:
Here is March 2009:
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Right now, the wind is ahowlin’. I have to use that term because it’s not merely blowing. It’s not very windy. It is literally ahowlin’.
Tonight’s the night I expect a few of my single pane windows to crack. That big huge window in my living room. I would not be shocked to see the 150′ palm tree across the street rocket right through it. Why? Not only because the ahowlin’ wind, but because I think our home insurance laspsed, due to non-payment. I don’t get paid. You don’t get paid. Easy-peasy. Actually, I think tonight was my cut-off. If I can figure out some (legal) way to scrounge up $1200, I’d pay it in a heartbeat. But I can’t. So my luck, being my luck, I’m gonna stay away, listening to the wind ahowlin’ and watch that tree shoot right through my window while my husband watches Alias.
BitchPhD posts about the flickr pool of messy homes, or rather “real” people’s homes. Not the psychotically clean and sterile homes you see in the pages of Dwell or BHG. The comments are delicious in that people talked about their messy homes, yet acknowledged that when company comes, they still apologize for the mess. I posted how my mother (aka Miss Hannigan) used to make us clean the house from top to bottom when company would come. She never cleaned, usually just lording over us from the sofa or her bed. We’d spend days scrubbing to her exacting “standards”. Usually this meant doing it over and over and over again to some perceived missed item. To add insult to injury, when company did come, my asshole mom would say, “Oh, sorry about the mess, I tried to get the kids to help me clean, but you know how they are.” Evil.
So, I have my own house and my own messy husband. We split the chores and ideally if we each kept up our ends, our house probably would be cleaner. The split goes:
Husband:
Me:
Like I said, neither of us really keep up our end of the bargain. I have to beg my husband daily to wash the flippin’ dishes, every other week, he nags me about having no underwear. So if we both held to our ends of the bargain, the trashcans in the bathroom would be emptied more often, there wouldn’t be a ginormous pile of clothes in our bedroom, we wouldn’t have stacks of cups and glasses on the side of the sink and there’d actually be meal-worthy food in our cupboards.
Notice that the common living areas have not been mentioned. We both clean them on our own volition and they stay pretty clean for the most part. Yes, there’s Cheerios everywhere and milk stains all over, but we sweep weekly and really think hard about mopping occasionally. As for the kids’ room, well I’m trying to deal with Destructo-Alton, but I’m really freakin’ tired of picking up all the toys and books only to have him empty the boxes and shelves when he gets home. I’m also trying to deal with Princess Ilia, but I’m really freakin’ tired of picking up all her clothes only to have her try to change 5 times between getting home at 7pm and bedtime at 9pm.
I do plan on cleaning today. In fact, I sat down at my desk to clean it off. I got on the computer to get some music going, but now I’m blogging. That’s 30 min. down the drain already. I’ll take some pics and post them as an addendum to this entry. Maybe some before and after shots. Beware, it may take days to do that.
I’m sure if I look through my archives I’ll find another post made sometime over the last two of years of me bitching and complaining about the weather. It’s hot.
It’s 101 in my backyard. In the shade. There’s no breeze.
Somehow, even though I’m hot, I’m not miserable and I just realized why this morning. I don’t have my old sucktastic neighbors to deal with any more. It’s one thing to be hot. It’s another to be hot and have to deal with assholes who play shitty music or yell through megaphones or just think they know everything about you, while be smug holier-than-thou pricks. Ya’ll who met my old neighbors know exactly who I’m talking about.
And there’s something to be said about being hot in your own domicile, versus sharing misery with 6 – 10 of your fellow coinhabitants. It’s said that ‘misery loves company’. I can tell you a hot day in August in that courtyard was bursting with love.