Meadow

Last year we invested a great deal of effort and quite a bit of money, attempting to correct our back yard lawn’s obvious deficiencies. It’s not a big back yard — we live in a housing tract comprised predominantly of three-plexes, with narrow back yards abutting each other on all sides. (It’s like a cube-farm for yards.) We don’t spend a whole lot of time in it (except eating on the adorable mini-deck during the summer months — it fits a tiny cafe table with umbrella, two chairs, and a grill precisely). Mostly, the lawn is that thing my husband is forced to mow (I can’t lift the ancient clunker mower to get it out of the garage, over the rocks, and to the lawn). The lawn is lumpy, with bald spots and moss and a swampy spot at the back, and it spawns weeds like blowfly maggots in carrion (which we refuse to spray for because the only creatures deriving any pleasure from it are our chemically-sensitive cats). And the cats mostly traverse it to the bushes at the back, where they spend hours ambushing each other and staring through the slatted fence into other yards (at what, I haven’t the slightest inkling).

So when the snow finally melted this spring, I thought I’d get the jump on the stupid lawn. I raked and fertilized, removed obvious weed holdouts from the year before, and re-seeded.

It was a wet spring. I’m convinced the grass seed drowned.

When the grass came in as patchy and tufty and wan as it’s ever been, despite aerating and fertilizing and mowing and weeding and all the rest of it, I couldn’t bring myself to waste any further emotional investment in it. And the combination of my laissez-faire with the nearly continuous rain and the hubby’s work schedule led to the grass getting entirely away from us. When he finally had a day that was dry enough to mow, that he actually wasn’t working, it was too late. We had a meadow.

To be fair to the hubby, he really did try to deal with the meadow, but it killed the weed-whacker, and that was pretty much the death-knell for the idea of lawn.

So instead, we now have a massive playground in which our charming pets play “deadly jungle cat”, springing out of the dense foliage to devour unsuspecting bugs (and incidentally wiping out unprotected ankles whenever I venture forth to water my tomatoes). Apart from the ankles, this is massively entertaining. And who knows — perhaps letting the yard go feral will mean a better-behaved lawn next year, after the snow kills the meadow off? (I’m not holding my breath.)

At least I have an excuse to be lazy.

Surreality

One of the most bizarre aspects of depression is the disconnect from “normal” life. Being unable to sleep at night, leading to large overdoses of melatonin (because the idea of facing more pointless, hatefully devoid-of-content television in the same semi-upright orientation is just intolerable), followed by hours of restless thrashing and redirecting the fan (toowarmtoocooltoowarmohdamnitallmyhairismoving), followed by 12 hours of utterly surreal, totally inescapable dreams. Making omelets at 2 pm, still bemused by said dreams. Followed by the inevitable awkward argument with self over trying to actually get shit done, with the inevitable results (“nah, it’s too late to accomplish anything”). Followed by the sneaking, “I’m not looking at what I’m doing so I can’t feel guilty about it” search for entertainment engrossing enough to distract me from what I’m not doing (“Lalalalalalala I’m not listening to youuuuuuuu”)...all of which leads to drinking in the middle of the day wearing a cracking leprous clay facial mask which sheds little crunchy flakes all over the furniture (it sounded like a good idea at the time), feeling inspired by someone else’s blog, and writing the world’s longest pointless run-on sentence.

Well. So. *Ahem.* Yep.

This would be the perfect moment for some shiny cheerful well-adjusted Canadian teenager to ring the doorbell, looking for contributors to his/her chosen (and utterly worthy) charity. (WTH? I never suffered the degradation of door-to-door for anything less than pure entrepreneurial greed. Gawds, I’m so American.) Just to complete the picture of me, overweight, bra-less, in jeans that truly need to be laundered (but nothing else fits so I refuse to put them in the laundry and hang out in my underwear because my laptop scorches my legs and I just KNOW that damn doorbell’s gonna ring and I won’t be able to hide), wearing a stone-age shaman’s demon-face, clutching a tequila sunrise.

I don’t know why I’m unable to ignore someone knocking at the door. Our doorbell is fatally crumbled away, necessitating sticking one’s finger into a jagged-plastic-shard-filled slot to ring the bell (which still works)...oddly, people tend to knock, instead. Which we really, truly cannot hear from anywhere except 15 feet away in the living room. Provided we aren’t playing music or drinking something with clink-y ice cubes or doing anything other than breathing quietly. No one ever knocks on our door except shiny cheerful Canadian teenagers soliciting for worthy charities. I know this, but I still can’t help answering the damn door. After which I’m compelled to trot out the same excuses for not contributing, which STILL don’t come out in any fashion that could be considered smooth and facile, no matter how ofter I have to dredge them up. After which I cannot avoid thinking about the ugly state of our finances, which are, in large part, my fault for being a thesis-avoiding chickenshit perpetual-grad-student money pit. After which I need another drink and a SERIOUSLY distracting source of entertainment.

Shit, I’m funny when I’ve been drinking tequila.

I am so gonna regret this post when I’m back in my right mind.