Stupid Spring Chores

Saturday we finally had semi-decent weather after several days of rainy gloom. So I decided to get busy. You see, there's an unspoken competition in every neighborhood that no one wants to admit is there. It's the "My yard looks better than your yard" competition. There's always someone who's goal for the summer is to have the best looking yard on the block and when they pull their lawn mower out for the first time each spring the rest of us know it's game time. I was hoping that because the weather had been so crummy lately that the start of the summer games would be held off a little bit...oh no, that was not to be. About a week ago I was sitting contently in my home working on a project when I heard a lawn mower come to life. My next door neighbor had officially started the spring race. For the next week I would feel shame every time I drove into my driveway because my yard looked so shabby next to his. I kept looking out the window hoping for the weather to clear up so that I too could clean up the left over mess from last fall. Finally, FINALLY yesterday it was warm enough to put my grass stained jeans from last year on.
I marched out the door and started pulling weeds in the front planter. I trimmed the bushes, gave the weird grass plant a haircut. Which, by the way, I'm sure the builder planted it as punishment. "He he he...," they thought, "we should plant this horrific bush so that the homeowner as to spend forever cleaning up the mess that is made every time the bush decides to shed." Do you like the haircut I gave it? Maybe it'll hate me enough that it won't grow back.
Next I had to find someone in the neighborhood stronger than me to wake the lawn mower up from it's deep slumber. I found Bob and he came over to give the beast's chord a good pull. And then another, and another, and another. Finally it roared to life. So I started mowing the front yard. I was going to be lazy, you know. I was just going to mow the front yard and wait for Jeff to come home so that he could mow the rest. Then I decided that it wasn't a very nice thing to do, so I started on the back yard too. One loop around, 142 to go. Halfway through the second loop I was feeling pretty good and was just getting geared up to push through the next hour (I h.a.t.e. to mow the lawn) when I stepped in a little divet in the grass and sprained my ankle. Hmmm...I bleeped a word in my mind and then tried to decide if I would call it bad karma and quit or if I'd finish. Then I decided to keep going because the only thing worse than a shaggy back yard is a shaggy back yard with only 1 1/2 loops that were mowed around the edges. Now there's ice on my ankle and the kids have become my slaves for the last couple of days. Maybe the neighborhood contest every year isn't such a bad thing after all.