Gotta follow the signs!

I am superstitious. I know it, I also know it is stupid, but I am --I plan everything so as not to jinx bad things into happening. It does not so much work. Consider this as I whine about the state of my growing of things, and maintenance of others.

This last week has made me crazy--the mower has been broke, and Barry has not been home early enough on any night to take the starter off so I can take it to the not-dealership to have it fixed. So the grass is appallingly high and we thus look like bigger hillbillies than we do on a normal day. The only two things that are worse are the pastures which are in desparate need of bush-hogging, which I have also been unable to do because the tractor is in the shop (which is a huge improvement from NOT being in the shop as it was for the weeks before this move); and the weed eating which BS has failed to do all year. I do what I can with my little battery weed eater, but the battery only lasts so long, and it juggles my arms to death--the situation is so dire that there are actual weeds that are TALLER than the swimming pool. That is serious, and ruins a person's good time when they are actually in the pool. Guilt at being a terrible home and yard keeper is a powerful thing. I swear my anxiety level gets higher with every inch above standard this stuff grows.

BS' biking friend Brant offered to help with the fence, in hopes that BS would then be allowed to go bike sooner rather than later. Friday nite, BS did not get around to picking up the fence at TSC, which I bought and paid $2K for last Sunday. He got up bright and early Saturday morning to get the starter off the mower so I could take it in, and pick up the fence and be at the farm by 9 to meet Brant.

Did any of this go right? Oh hell no. TSC does not have the fence. Nor did they have it when they sold it to me. What a waste of Brant's help this will be, I say to myself. We finally get someone to help us with something, and this is what happens. A whole weekend free to do this work and we are not going to be able to do any of it. This makes me cranky.

It gets not so much better when I take the starter to the shop and it actually works. I think I might have cried a little as this means I STILL cannot mow, in that we have an unidentified thing wrong with the mower, instead of the quick fix. I am confident I scared the bejeezus out of the mechanics there, so they tell me to haul the entire mower up there on the trailer.

I go to the farm to tell BS this, knowing he will yell and say he does not have time for that crap, but he does in fact have time, due to the lack of having any fence to put up. Off they go to take the non-going mower to the shop, where poor Brant falls through a rotten spot on the trailer. Just flat disappears I guess--oh my! A fine how do you do for helping us huh? Now Brant says this is their "next project"-- well boy howdy, where did this dude come from? I don't care but I am keeping him if it gets things doen around here.

By this point, I have had enough of this day and it is not even noon. I have weedeated and pulled weeds and am working on an asthma attack, when my sister shows up to swim. That means I have to clean the pool--which needed to be done anyway, but the rate I was going, I was likely to blow up the pump.

Things did get better from here on out. I am satisfied that is because I have pretty much written off the entire weekend. At some point, BS calls and says the mower is FIXED! And it can come home. I swear I felt like I won a marathon, and all I am doing is putzing around in the pool complaining about every single thing that goes through my pea brain. Of course by now, all of Brant's time for helping is pretty much used up and I even forget to ask if any headway was made on some other part of the fence. Ultimately BS comes home, and tells me that he and Brant set ALL the poles. There had been 70 of 195 remaining, and BS had never been able to do more than 15 in a sitting, and they did them ALL!

This was wonderful news, and meant that we could make some real progress around here, what with me being able to mow, fence being ready for the next step as long as TSC gets with the program.

Except, as is standard around here---we were no longer fit to do work--too much sun, too much laying around, and too much general rabble rousing--but at least I did get a cute pic of BS and my sister playing in the pool. AND--she is getting freckles for the first time ever, which does my black heart good--even if they do look cute on her. Typical