Wednesday, June 13, 2018

My color's green. I'm spring.

Is it just me, or do things feel grim and then grimmer? Looking back at low times, dark times, politically bizarre times now — or times we thought were bad or weird — none of it seems quite so bad. Which makes me nervous about the future.

Mark and I embarked on Phase One of our summer fence project. Monday we tore down the old fence (well, most of it was down already, but we pulled up posts and yanked apart fence sections, and stacked everything tidily in the yard). Tuesday we rented a truck (a moving truck), and we filled that truck with fence and drove that fence to the dump. Eight hundred pounds of fence, give or take. We also threw in some large trash that we'd been hoarding in our basement. Then we drove the truck home and filled it twice more with brush that we'd been hoarding in a corner of our yard. Then we drove those loads to the dump.



The sad thing in this photo is the Big Wheel, not the boat.

Oh, how I hate the dump. Well, I like certain aspects of it, like the areas where like items are stacked, nicely categorized and organized like what you'd expect to find at a Montessori Dump. Hot tubs with hot tubs. Concrete blocks all together, tires neatly assembled, air conditioners with their air conditioner families. But the bulk of it is "mixed," like the above photo, and we were surprised that this is where our fence was meant to go. Also, any brush, plastic, or anything else that happened to ride along in the truck with the fence. Brush and other yard waste that was traveling solo was allowed to go in the "yard waste" pile. Horrifyingly, huge pushing trucks (front loaders? bulldozers? I used to know the names of them all, back when Isaac was a truck aficionado) would loom suddenly up right beside you and abruptly shove all the trash back into the trash mountain when you least expected it. 

The worst thing about the dump was a fox we saw there, slinking around, low to the ground, skinny and sad. Its tail was just so ragged and thin. It made me really sad.

We didn't get all the brush out of here, but we got most of it. Phase Two is erecting the new fence on that side. Phase Three, I regret to tell you, is identical to Phase One except on the other side of the yard.

On the upside, I have been making delicious smoothies with my trusty little mild-mannered blender (matcha, frozen banana, spinach, almond milk, vanilla protein powder yesterday. Frozen banana, peanut butter, cacao powder, vanilla protein powder, almond milk today. I think of this as "the Elvis smoothie" of course). We voted yesterday, and it was busy. I don't remember them loudly calling out your registered political party in the past, but they did yesterday, and I was shocked that there were several Republicans in line in front of me. 

Also on the upside, flowers.


Does anyone not like peonies? We once knew a lady in Kansas who pronounced it "pee OH nee."

She's my girl. My secret life's goal is to get her to love me more than she loves Gus or Mark.


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