| | In case you haven’t been keeping up with the weather in central Pa, we have been getting rain and rain and more rain. It rained for 10 days straight right after we moved in, sometimes just a drizzle, but mostly lots and lots of hard, pounding rain, cats and dogs. Streets flooded, the creek near our old house overflowed its banks; it was crazy. And our grass is drinking up all that water as fast as its little roots can, and so, the lawn needs to be mowed again for the third time. Since we’ve been here exactly 3 weeks and 1 day, I am pretty impressed with us that we have mowed the lawn almost 3 times!!! I think this must be a record. Of course, we are still trying to impress our neighbors—-make them think we are normal, suburban types (although I think our one neighbor might have been a little skeptical when our kids were ferreting away these large stones they put in a wall around their garden—-they hadn’t quite realized the boundaries of our territory yet, I think...our kids, I mean).
Anyway, in the first half day of no rain, I thought I’d better run out and mow since our grass was high, they were predicting rain for the afternoon and the next day, and we were expecting company that weekend. Now, my brother-in-law said when his family saw a woman mowing the lawn, they always wondered what was wrong with the husband. And I actually feel slightly squeamish about that. I mean, I grew up in the country, and there it didn’t matter. There were acres and acres and hours and hours of lawn to be mowed, so it was assumed everyone would have to contribute their fair share (unless one were so fortunate as to run into trees a few times with the tractor, managing to break a few headlights, making one’s father wary of one’s capability with lawn mowing machines--not, of course, that that ever happened to anyone I know). Anyway, all that feministic equality seems lacking in the suburbs. It’s pretty much only men who talk about anything so mundane as their lawns, and mostly men out there mowing perfect little strips on their precise little lawns. But nonetheless, I decided to sacrifice my husband’s good reputation and mow.... I lasted 45 minutes, and our front lawn looked gorgeous, but the back yard, most of the yard, still remained, and I was completely drained and dripping. I thought ruefully of our refusal to purchase the previous owner’s ride-on mower (“who needs a ride-on mower to mow a mere ½ acre?”). In fact, forget the ride-on; what we need is goat...tied up on rope that we move around every day, and we could drink the milk! Doesn’t that sound ecologically-minded? Or maybe we can just wait until our own four kids grow up, and they can mow for us. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket! That’s why we had four. So, I’ve left the rest of the mowing up to Dave, who I must say mows much more quickly, but since he cares nothing about the precise, little lines, we are no longer quite so beautiful.
Other than that, I have been spending the last couple of days spending lots and lots of money. Now, normally this pastime would fill me with great delight, but somehow laying down lots of cash to have the carpets cleaned is not quite as satisfying as buying clothes or a couch. And plopping down money for a condensation pump for our central A/C is even less appealing (although it does seem to have done the job as there is no longer a little puddle in the basement). Ironically, I was just thinking the other day how good it was that we bought this particular house because there isn’t really anything that needs to be done, a huge relief to my frugal husband. (I, on the other hand, was always really attracted during our house-hunting days to houses that needed walls banged out and kitchens redone or beautiful additions added on.) But I’m beginning to suspect that this house will find ways to milk money out of us pretty well nonetheless.
Still, I love it. It is bright and open, and I think just the newness makes me feel like it’s cleaner, or maybe just makes me more interested in cleaning it.
We also now have DSL!!! Hooray! So, you would think I would be blogging all the time, but actually with summer here, I have a lot of competition for the computer (not to mention my time). Abby and Jamie learned Google at computer class at school, so they have printed off puppets and zillions of $100 bills that are so genuine looking Dave went around printing the word “Copy” on as many as he could locate at the time. (Not that we have ever had a $100 bill lying around that I can remember, so I don’t think I would ever get mixed up.)....and Star War paper doll figures, and domino sets, and math fact sheets, and Narnia maps. We are working hard to keep those loggers and tree growers in business, a fact which Dave does not quite appreciate.
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| | Posted 7/13/2006 9:59 PM - 2 views - 3 comments
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