Leisureitis.

Leisureitis.

I think I have it.

Why?

Cuz, I've started working in the yard like an indentured servant.

About four weeks ago, I came home from walking with a friend of mine who is a yard nut. I mean certifiable.When we walk, we talk yard. Her yard. Her flowers. Her annuals. Her perennials.Her dirt. Her trees. I feel like I'm walking with Walter Reeves. Since late March, when I ask her what she's been doing, she says, "working in the yard."

Me: Doing what?
Her: I take it you don't work in the yard?
Me: No. HOUSEwife. I do the inside; HUSBANDry -- works in the yard or with animals.
Her: I think that's slightly archaic.
Me: Doesn't make it wrong.

{actually it's obsolete, it originally meant -- domestic management, thrift, or frugality, but she doesn't need to know that -- I'm a word nerd, you know.}

Anyway, she and I walk three times a week, and she is always working in the yard, going to Home Depot or Lowe's, picking up manure, or asking me if I want this or that plant. Some mornings she went to one of those places before we walked.

HELLO.

Anyway, after walking with her about four weeks this spring, I came home inspired to "put on some gloves" and a "straw hat" and do something in the yard.

So, I weeded the flower bed by the driveway.

BTW: Weeds are tenacious devils.. and there are more of them than us. They hold on for dear life while I hack away at them. I'm like Pearl in The Scarlet Letter who pretended weeds were Puritan children. Ha. Ha. I like to decimate them with a brick trowel. It's violent but effective.

Anyway.

The weather was gorgeous --- cool, mild, and sunny.

So, I spent three hours weeding the yard.

I liked it except for the getting up and down. Man, I thought I was crippled when I was done, but there is some satisfaction in putting the hands in the dirt, the smell of rich soil, kind of loamy, minus the sand, and the quiet of outside.... except for a few quacking black ducks [crows], and the occasional barking of my neighbor's dogs who hallucinate about intruders... it was a fulfilling experience.

Really.

I am officially old. Certified. I got the insect bites to prove it.

Apparently, while I was "in the yard" that day, David had tried to call me several times.

David: Where are you? What are you doing?

Aside: Since I retired, I seem to need more accountability than when I worked. David likes to check on me to see if I am ...... productively occupied? Taking a nap? Talking on the phone? Watching Friday Night Lights Season 1? Reading? Eating lunch out?

He also asks about Tallulah and Keats like they've been told to clean the house while he was gone or something. I always say something smart alecky like ---"Tallulah just finished War and Peace and Keats has been playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 with a cat from Sweden."

Needless to say, he finds me pretty unfunny.

Go figure.

Where were we? Oh yeah, pick up conversation after "what are you doing?"

Me: You're not goinna believe it.
David: You're been out applying for a job?
Me: Funny. Only not.
David: You walked extra?
Me: Uh, no.
David: You ordered fries with lunch?
Me: No. No. No. I've been working in the yard.
David: Whose yard?
Me: Very funny. Our yard. I weeded the flower bed by the driveway.

*thud*

Me: David? David? You still there?

I have never liked working in the yard. David couldn't get me outside unless it was to hold the ladder while he cleaned the gutters [cause I worried when he got on the ladder] and threw disgusting muck from them to the ground -- ultimately, I got gutter do do on me in some ways. I would scream and squeal like a thirteen year old.

It's weird the things I am motivated to do since I retired.. sit on the deck and identify birds by their sound, check up on the neighbors going and comings, talk to the postman about health care, and NOW, work in the yard?

*thwack*

What am I thinking?

I am a hard-working yard woman complete with gloves, hat, worn out tennis shoes, and vicious new weapons -- the snippers, the shears, and the stool -- and I tackle the yard. The only thing that would improve them is if my weapons were red.

*tee hee*