Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Y’know, it’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. I sure as hell do. It’s just that I haven’t had the time to do it lately. And on those occasions when I have had time to do it, I’ve been too damned tired to do it! So this here blob has lapsed and I hate when that happens!

I have a post about the Joy Division/Control dream double-bill half-written, but it’s not exactly time-sensitive, so I will not tackle it tonight. I will just tell you about my recent adventures in gardening.

First off, let me admit that I have the proverbial black thumb. It doesn’t have even the slightest green tinge to it. All you have to do is give me a plant and, together, we can watch it wither and die on my watch. I am neglectful. It is not intentional. But it is pure disinterest on my part.

As for gardening, well, when I was a kid, our church was given use of a field out on a farm on Plank Road and a bunch of families in the church were each given their own little plots. Mom planted vegetables and she and Dad and I went out to tend to it regularly. Now, I don’t know if I can even describe the level of dread I felt every week as Farm Day approached. Ugh, ugh, ugh, how I despised it! And it was probably all for yucky vegetables that I didn’t even like, anyway–peas and onions and gourds of every shape and colour but the same nasty taste. *gag* Every week, we hadda go out there and dink around with the fuggin’ plants. I sat in the back seat of the Chevelle and pouted all the way out Plank. I scowled. I turned up my nose and curled my lip. Then, when we arrived, I slunk out and tried to as little as possible. Biding my time, mostly, until we could leave.

When I moved into my house (and, yes, maybe someday I will sit down and tell that story), there was already a pretty healthy crop of weeds in the gardens that run along the inside of the back yard fence and the back of the house and garage. There was also a no-man’s land around two sides of the storage shed–areas where the weeds were so thick, you couldn’t get in to investigate. All this time, I have studiously ignored the weeds as they grew stronger and heartier and taller. “I will get to you, eventually,” I’d say and waggle my finger at them.

On Sunday, it was high time I cut the grass (it had been about a week–mebbe 8 days, actually… long enough, anyway, that my lawncare-nerd Dad would faint if he knew)(“Haven’t I taught you anything about lawncare, lo these many years?! Agh, I’m a failure as a father!”). So I went back to the shed to get the mower, paused, and cast a hairy eyeball at the crop of weeds that had completely engulfed the two-feet-wide garden along the back of the house and around the shed. I reached down and pulled out a handful.

Well, I never did get to the lawn that day, but I did manage to pull six fucking garbage bags’ worth of weeds outta my yard. By the time I was stuffing the last bag, I was practically in tears, I was so exhausted. And I’d been stung by a bee, to add injury to insult. Little fucker. I hope those are the little bastards who die after they sting you. Die, die, you dirty muthafugga!!

That’s what I pulled and where I pulled ‘em from. You can see my little stool practically buried underneath. And you’ll note I left a total of one plant standing. It had some pretty orange flowers on it a couple weeks ago, so I wanted to keep it. I’m sure it’s just a weed, too, but at least it’s a pretty weed.

If you look down here, imagine weeds as tall as the roof of the shed… not to mention a few saplings. Hadda use some shears on those ones.

It was while trying to use the shears on a sapling that was growing out through the latticework around the deck that rings two sides of my house that I apparently awakened the stinging hoards. There must be a hive underneath the deck and now I gotta figure out how to deal with that. Only one stung me, but I had a reaction to the sting. That was a new experience. My forearm where I was stung got red and itchy and swollen. You know what it looked like?

…Kinda like that, yeah. I’ve been popping Benedryls for the past 30 hours and it is just starting to return to normal, finally. Perhaps I should plant spinach where once there were weeds.

Oh, nah. Who am I kidding? It would just wither and die from neglect. Seems like the only plants that manage to thrive on my negligence are weeds.

If anybody reading this has some tools better than the high quality ones I bought in the dollar section of Target

and likes to smash shit to pieces, have I got a job for you!

I dunno what the hell it is (but git mah pitcher beside it!)(Laurie, you’re prolly the only one who will get that reference), but I found it in my back yard shed when I moved in.

At first, I thought it was a dog house. But it has no entrance. Then I thought mebbe it was a bird house. But, again, no holes. I flipped it over and found nuthin’. Except spiders, natch. And I beat them all to hell with a broom while fear-dancing around it. Lucky my back yard has a privacy fence around it, eh?

Best I can figger is that it was the decoration on the house’s or the garage’s roof at some point in the past. Although it’s not shaped to fit on a roof. Unless some previous roof was flat. Beats me.

In any case, I gotta get rid of it to free up space in the shed. See, I am inheriting some exercise equipment and am going to set up a gym in the garage, so I need to move some stuff I have in the garage now into the shed, instead. That means the gnome home–or whatever it is–hasta go.

My cheap-ass wrench won’t keep its grip tightened so I can’t loosen the nuts. If I hadda mallet, I’d just smash the shit out of it. So, y’know, if your toolkit is better equipped than mine (and whose isn’t?), feel free to drop by and dismantle this thing for me. There’s plenty of beer in the fridge.

Okay, so I get home tonight (finally–after having crop-dusted over hill and dale across Southwestern Ontario, shopping for living room furniture on the way home from work) and open up the freezer to take something out to bbq for dinner tonight and–W!T!F!–it looks like it has hailed in my freezer. There’s half-frozen water icelets everywhere and a lotta stuff feels only half-frozen. Befuddled, I empty the freezer into the sink, lamenting over how it’s too damned bad I hosted Father’s Day dinner last weekend, since it appeared that I would have enough unthawed steaks and chicken breasts and rack of lamb to do it (again) this weekend. So much for all those great sales I took advantage of over the past couple of weeks. Fucksakes.

I go get an armload of towels to sop it up.

And notice the front plate of the furnace is off.

Now, this week has been a mite chilly. And a couple nights ago I tried to turn the gas furnace on for the first time since moving in and found that there was no heat coming up through the grates. The blower was blowing but it was blowing chilly air up into my furrowed brow as I stood over the grate, perplexedly looking down at it… as if I thought that if it could see my disappointment it would right itself. Well, I knew that my new gas account was up and active (I should know, since I work for the fuggin gas company !!). After all, I have a gas water heater, too, and there’s been no shortage of hot water since I moved in at the beginning of the month. So all I could conclude was that there was certainly gas coming into the house but it wasn’t getting any further than the water heater. Some valve must be closed or the furnace’s pilot light must be out. Which is fine and dandy and prolly easy to fix if you aren’t ascairt of blowing up your new house. Which I am.

So this sounded like A Job For Dad!

In the meantime, I would just sleep in socks and nestle in between the feather bed beneath me and the duvet on top of me. All cozy and warm, no biggie.

Anyhow, when I discovered Dad had been here today, I gave my parents a call to see 1. why the front plate of the furnace was still off, and 2. if they were aware of a power outage ’round here.

1. Dad couldn’t find the pilot light (this is significant, since my Dad has dealt with gas furnaces his whole adult life, so if he couldn’t find it, sure as shit I wouldn’t've found it) so I will hafta call the gas company (my gas company… the gas company I work for, that is) and have a service call to show me where the frickin pilot light is. 2. Yes, the power had been off while they were here. And now I had a freezer full of unfrozen or half-frozen meat.

*sigh*

But all of that is worth it for this, which I snapped after having cleaned up the freezer and gone out for a walk to clear my head…

BBQ at my place this weekend.

Yes, I will eventually get around to sitting myself down to tell you about my domestication but, at this point, I am finding little time for it and energy being expended elsewhere. I will be relieved to finally settle into my new home but right now I’m still feeling around in the dark (well… not literally–I did manage to set up the utilities!).

After a rain storm this evening, I went out for a walk along the lakeshore in the gloaming and took my camera.

You know there is a reason why I have been so quiet lately…

I will tellya all about it soon. Just ain’t had time yet.

In the meantime, lissen to this and picture me dancing around my livingroom… My very own livingroom.