There are very few things that relax me like a good massage. All of my stress is in my neck so I walk around carrying boulders on my shoulders. 

I went to a massage place to have the boulders removed and relax a little.  I explained to the guy that now was not the time for him to get dainty.  I’m not into the soft stuff. Use your elbows, knees, a jackhammer, whatever it takes to get the knots out.

He started on my lower back and holy moly, he was good at his job. I could feel the knots sprinting away and I couldn’t hold back the little moan of relief. By the time Magic Fingers got to my neck, I didn’t even try to hold the moans back.

When he was done I thanked him and said I was sorry for all the moaning but I felt so much better. His reply…

“No problem.  I get that alot with women your age.  But you really should come in more often, you have issues.” (Pointing to his shoulders)

Kid, you have no idea.

Gone are the days of finding love notes on my pillow. Gone are the days of finding sonnets in the mailbox.

These are the notes I receive now and I cherish them for many reasons.  It is honest and precious and pure and will be kept in my jewelry box forever…. and one day this will be the perfect note to read at her engagement party!

This was handed to me by the wee one who was the delivery man for the older one while she was indisposed… 

When the feeling strikes, you have to do what you have to do. 🙂

I got my first pair of readers today.  As much as I’d love to say they give me the hot librarian look, they just prevent me from looking crazy.

For months, I have been blinking things into focus. Some of you can commiserate – you stare at the text, bringing as much direct light with you as possible,  and then blink hard and often until you can make out enough of it to get by.

People either thought I was flirting or having a stroke. Either way, I looked crazy.

Now I look normal but feel old.  Who hit the fast forward button on my life’s cassette tape?

Today’s entry of trivial problems I have #364:

Trying to put a king size, super fluff-filled, firm pillow into a tight pillow case without swearing.

I am failing fantastically. I sound like a delinquent from the streets of Compton. It looks like the biscuit is about to bust out of the can, but it’s in.

I’ll need a glass of wine before I start on the other one.

Cleaning my room – the room hit hardest by the vacation unpacking. Think about a cotton hurricane hitting a tsunami of tchotchkes and add a tornado of toiletries… It’s overwhelming and slow moving. My little guy decides to help and finds a penny under my bed. With bright eyes and an innocent smile he says “Mom! A penny under your bed, maybe you’ll get lucky!” To which my sweet girl replies, “No way, mom doesn’t have that kind of luck”.

 

Deep sigh.

The fun continues in the world of being me… I stopped to get dinner after working late. While in line, minding my own business, a friend of a friend recognizes me and says hello. We talk while moving up in line until I’m on deck to order my tacos. I say “it was nice running into you”, and he says, “You know, you look different than your FB picture.” I’m caught off guard because we’re not FB friends. Before I can question it, he follows with a pat to my shoulder and says “too bad we can’t have photoshop in real life, huh?” … are you freaking kidding me?! Must we say every little thing that pops in our head? I nearly had a come-apart! I have been up since 5:45am, it’s 7:30pm and I still haven’t eaten lunch. I just want my Chipotle happy place and my favorite fat pants. I am very aware that I’m not enjoying any kind of pageant moment – gravity has taken hold of my eyeliner and the rain/humidity have created some kind of paradox with my hair so it’s wet but growing larger by the minute. My point is not that I am offended, it’s that my patience with filter-less people expired today. The name of the ignorant will not be given, but I think we should all say a quick prayer for his future because he’s going to say something like that to a woman who isn’t exhausted one day and catch a swift kick to the berries… and that’s nobody’s good day.

I am out of creamer, a rarity and travesty in my house. I run to the store to escape the emergency of no coffee in the morning. I’m sitting at the red light, look over to see a clean cut, forty-something year old man in a Lexus bee-bopping to his favorite jam.

I grin because I love music, with the exception of hard rap and John Meyer, and am constantly getting looks for singing like I’m giving a concert in my car… Target… grocery store… I can break out into song pretty much anywhere, to my children’s great embarrassment.

A mower was purchased. A lawn was mowed. But it’s me so you know it’s not that simple.

We went to Home Depot yesterday and I got a battery powered Ryobi lawn mower. It’s not a Porsche, it’s not a Pinto, it’s somewhere in between. I wasn’t looking for the best, I just needed the blades to be sharp and the wheels to be round.

Disclaimer: you’ll find that I keep my expectations fairly low which sounds sad, but it helps the optimist in me be pleasantly surprised when things go well. Whatever keeps your clock ticking, right?

The mower was all clean and shiny when it came out of the box and the first few push tests last night were easy. (insert a scoff here, now having finished the yard)

I plugged the battery in to charge overnight, turned the lights out (this will be an important detail later) and went to bed early.

The kids aren’t here this weekend so the first order of business for a Saturday morning is to sleep in as late as possible. Dottie (the girl dog) started howling at 7:15am. I spent the next 15 minutes Googling mussles for her. No purchase was made (yet) but threats were given.

After a few morning chores and consumption of much coffee, I dressed the part of an avid mowerist – shorts, tank top, sunglasses, Spotify, earbuds and Vitamin Water.

I ran inside to get the battery and to my dismay, it wasn’t charged. I turned the overhead light on to see the fine print and magically it started charging.

Then it hit me – I had chosen the one and only outlet in the house that turns on and off with the light switch. After some words I won’t repeat, I picked another outlet and watched the battery light blink at the starting line.

More four letter words inserted here.

I putz around until the battery was charged around 9am and head outside to rock my first mow job. I know that will baffle some of you, but I have never really mowed before. That was dad’s job in my house growing up. Not because it’s a man’s job, but because my dad loved to mow. Or at least that’s what I thought growing up. Now having done it, of course he didn’t love to mow. Who would love that hellish job? But I honestly thought he did when I was young.  My bad.

A few things to think about before I go on:

I live on a rather large hill + It’s not a self-propelled mower + the grass is at least a foot high = I’m sweating to the oldies within 5 minutes.

Because the grass was so thick/high, I had to mow every row twice. I made it about half way down the hill before the battery gave out and left the great divide (see below).

So inside I go to charge the battery, and outside I go to get the weed whacker. I got about half way down the hill before the strings quit on me.

With no replacement spool, I ditched the whacker for the hedge trimmers. On the first blow they break apart, never to be bound again. I got a pair of utility scissors and went nuts on the bushes.

Disclaimer: I am extremely determined (some say stubborn, but I don’t talk to those people much) when I want to be.

The good Lord was trying to get me inside though because it’s now 11:something and 90 degrees.  I’m drenched and my legs are bloody from wearing shorts while mowing/trimming.  Pine cones are mean.

I go in for mass quantities of water and see that the battery has charged enough for me to finish the yard.  It is now 12:30pm, over 90 degrees, 1000% humidity and the yard is only slighted shaded. Shoot me.

You should see the zigzag rows in the grass. Y’all, it looks like a drunkard mowed the bottom half of the yard today. It was so hot that I could actually see the Pokemon GO characters jumping around laughing at me. It was Mow-jo GO!

The battery died again as I was wrapping up, reinforcing that it was time to call it quits and cool down.

So let’s recap – it took one mower, two battery lives, one weed whacker, two extension cords, one hedge trimmer, one pair of utility scissors, one rake, four hours, six Vitamin Waters, three band-aids and two gallons of sweat to do my yard today…

And I’m not even finished.

$20 says I dream about Pokemon characters destroying my new lawn mower tonight.

Without explanation or warning, there are those nights that you just can’t sleep.

You have gotten up early with the kids who very sweetly asked for two different breakfast choices. You’ve played with race cars, Xbox, read stories, done laundry, run errands, made two different lunches, done more laundry, cleaned the kitchen, paid some bills, a little yard work, played referee to fighting children, actually folded the laundry, gotten gum out of the kids hair and the carpet, cleaned the bathroom (the toilet anyway, and just the one that any guests might see… let’s not get crazy), folded the rest of the laundry, killed the spider, kissed the boo boos, listened to piano practice, fixed dinner (just one option this time), unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, bathed the children, clothed the children, brushed the children, cuddled with the children, put the children to bed and put the laundry on the chair in your room (next to yesterday’s pile) because it’s late and you’re too tired to put it where it goes.

So why can’t we sleep?! At what point do our bodies turn against us and decide that 3am is a great time to think about the college degree you should have gotten, the college degrees your kids might get, the items at the grocery store you forgot to get, the gray hairs you already have, and of course, world peace.

If anyone should find me tomorrow passed out with a frying pan in my hand, just let me sleep the concussion off.

We’ve been at the beach, as you know, and came home to the grasslands. The yard is atrocious. I am “that” neighbor, the one people talk about but don’t talk to. The one that you drive by and either feel sorry for or infuriated with for not keeping the neighborhood looking good.

Mowing the lawn has never been in my job description; the pretty stuff was up to me. The flowers, the planters, the baskets full of colors, all the extras were my call. But now that it is all on my to do list, I’m very aware of how green and fast the grass grows on every side. With no mower though, what’s a girl to do?

Enter the weed whacker.

I’ve used a trimmer before but never against the green jungle. I decided to attack the back yard first, just in case it didn’t work. What’s worse than an un-kept yard? An un-kept yard with alien crop circles making it that much more “special”.

So I start in the back corner of the back yard. About 15 minutes in, hand already cramping from holding the trigger, I stop to see the progress. Both square feet were beautiful and gave me the boost I needed to go another 30.

At about the 45 minute mark, I hit a rogue blade that flew right in my eye. Already drenched in sweat, I run through the house with my good eye burning from sweaty drips, searching for eye drops.

Determined and now sporting yellow protective glasses, yoga pants and my sports bra that creates that oh-so-desirable uni-boob, I turned Salt n Pepa’s “None of your business” on the old ear buds and became Hard Core Cami.

Over two hours later I cut the final blade with trembling arms. Covered in grass, and I do mean COVERED, clothes wet from the pouring sweat, and itching from the man-eating, vengeance-seeking mosquitoes, I walked straight to the bathroom to shower the yard off of me.

I am now having a Redhead on the rocks for dinner but have to use a straw as my arms are completely useless. Any advice on good lawnmowers are welcome, I see a purchase in my future.