We didn't plant the ivy. No we didn't grow it, but we're gonna mow it.

Say, for whatever reason, you ever get the urge to go out into your backyard, tear most of it up, and plant an assload of ornamental bushes, creeping English ivy, and mutant weed/plant hybrids. Maybe you enjoy gardening. Maybe you don't like mowing the lawn. Maybe you're trying to create a habitat for small to medium sized jungle creatures.

Whatever.

It may look nice for a little while. It may provide some much needed privacy around the perimeter of your yard. It'll look great when it snows and you want to take some pictures to send to the family. You may even look out your kitchen window from time to time and admire your handiwork, bless your green thumb, and wonder what your life was like before all those glorious green things made their way into your world.

The problem is, you will eventually want to move on. You'll put your house on the market and skedaddle, leaving your home and all its little bush-like friends sit vacant for a year or two. Maybe more. One day, a nice young couple will finally make an offer on the house, move in, and make it their own.

Too occupied with minor in-home details such as - oh, replacing the pipes and appliances, getting rid of the mildewed wallpaper, and tearing carpet that's about as comfortable to walk on as AstroTurf - they will completely ignore the landscaping. They'll spend winter snuggled inside painting and grouting and scrubbing and being in love, completely oblivious to condition of the Chicksaw and the Spirea.

And then, as it is known to do, Spring will come. One of the new occupants will notice a daffodil growing along the fence and call the other one out to see it. It is then, after a long cold winter indoors, that they will take a cursory and exacting look around the backyard.

And then they will almost shit their pants.

The rain and sun have turned what was once a smattering of plant life into a full blown jungle. Someone will say, "We should cut down that tree," and point to an eight foot growth spreading its leaves across the fence line. The other will respond, "I'm pretty sure that's a weed."

And they will be correct.

They will buy books and scour the internet and try to figure out exactly what is germinating and why. They will look for estimates from landscapers and immediately get heartburn once they realize how many months of their salary it is equivalent to. They will buy tools with funny names and ridiculously angled rotating blades. They will beg everyone they know to help them tame the beast before the county issues them a summons.

Why are there wild strawberries growing around the patio? How do I kill these mushrooms? Is this poison ivy? What the bugger is ground cherry? For the love of all that is holy, what just bit me?

In the end, they will decide to scrap it all and start from scratch. The Crape Myrtles and the Lilac are manageable and by a stroke of luck, salvageable. The Sycamores and the Catalpa will stay, because it would cost something comparable to a new Kia to have them removed. Other that that, it's a weed/plant liquidation sale - Everything. Must. Go.

This is where the blood, sweat, and tears come in. Before or after long days in the office, the couple will pull, dig, cultivate, and weed. They will dodge gigantic spiders living under uprooted plants, scratch mosquito bites, and sweat so badly they can barely see. They will lose toenails, gain blisters, suffer through sunburn and dehydration. They will spend Sunday afternoons smelling like soil and salt as they strain to listen to the baseball game on the portable radio and simultaneously free the side of their home from ivy with roots as thick as as three fingers.

They will hope against hope that at some point their shovels will hit buried treasure, which they can then use to pay for that landscaper they talked to last Spring.

They will break saws. They will break skin. They will break the record of single day utterances of "fuckery" and "bullshit."

And then, eventually and quite suddenly, they will break the invisible spirit of the weeds. They will see changes for the first time in months. They'll see holes where stumps once were and grass where dirt once was. They will see their neighbor's house and pool and dog and wonder where it all came from. They will stand in front of a four foot pile of yard waste in awe, with goosebumps running electric down their arms because they will have discovered a new dynamic between themselves and their surroundings.

They have discovered progress.

Maybe not this year, but just possible the next one will be their year. The one where they can make lists of plants for the new butterfly garden and sketch plans for a new fence or fire pit. They'll be able to drink a beer outside on a hot summer night without getting snacked on by the resident mosquito population.

Until then, progress will have to suffice, and piles of god knows what, like the one pictured above, will have to serve as a reminder that the grass is always greener, literally, when it's not being suffocated by giant weeds.

New Music For Old Souls

Today started off brilliantly, teetered around alright, and then turned into awesome.

I woke up late, with the windows wide open, and for the first day in a long while it was beautiful outside. Very low humidity, bright blue skies, and plenty of sunshine. A normal person would have taken the opportunity to get outside and have a picnic or something like that, but I'm not a normal person. My husband was at the office, and I was too in love with the way the sunlight fell on my bedroom floor. Therefore, I spent a good six hours laying on my bed, in my underwear and a tank, watching my beloved Olympics.

Lying around in a pair of panties, as amazing as it may sound, can get quite boring. I had watched beach volleyball, sculling, and swimming. I'd marveled at the fact that a skinny little kayak-ish vehicle could move so quickly across the water, and that the women's beach volleyball players wear such tiny bikini bottoms. Then I was kind of done with the games. At least for the afternoon.

Jeremy soon came home, and Missy and Jon came over, and we traveled to beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the Chameleon Club where we saw Hoots and Hellmouth open for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals .

That was a lot of links, and I apologize, but the show was amazing. We missed our chance to see Grace and the band a couple of years ago at Bonnaroo. My Morning Jacket played the night before at midnight, and we got incredibly drunk and stayed up until four in the morning. Combine all that with the 95 degree Southern Tennessee heat, and you'll get someone who wants to sleep for fourteen hours.

I'm glad we didn't miss her this time. Hoots was amazing, as always, and we drove home through Amish country with bellies full of beer and heads full of whispered words and corkboard stomps.

What more can you ask for, really?

Sweet Thursday is calling me back up to Monterey

So, my brilliant idea to post pictures of happy things to get over each dreaded Wednesday was completely thwarted last night by Michael Chabon- and the sweet lull of Pat Sajak's voice.

I intended to post, but made the mistake of laying on my bed to read a few chapters of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh while Wheel of Fortune was on the television, volume turned down almost to a whisper. The next thing I knew, it was after ten at night and Jeremy was waking me up. I think I managed to stay awake for another twenty minutes, and then I nodded off again. You'd think that today I would have hopped out of bed, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, but apparently the 10.5 hours of sleep I got weren't enough, because I managed to oversleep by about twenty minutes.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

I have this grand plan to get myself on some sort of a schedule, hopefully starting Monday. I've never understood how I can be so organized in most aspects, so completely Virgoan that it's almost sickening, and then be so hopeless in other ways. I long to be one of those people who goes to the market every Monday, with a list of all the ingredients I'll need for each night's meal. I want to have a set number of days that I go to the gym, I want to be that girl who walks into the coffee shop and hears "Oh, it must be Tuesday at six! Large decaf latte?"

I want to be predictable, how awful is that?

If I don't get some sort of schedule working soon, I am going to be looking at a long series of 7:45 bedtimes, which will make my life just about as interesting as spending an evening cleaning out your mouse with a paperclip and one of those aerosol cans full of air.

Anyway, since I missed my Wednesday pictures, I'll leave you with another Winston picture, which means that in addition to falling asleep earlier than my Grandmother, I'm also turning into Crazy Animal Lady Who Acts Like Her Pets Are Her Kids.

Awesome.

Please notice that Winston is wearing a bra. He has a thing for them, and pulls them out of the hamper or the laundry basket to play with. This particular bra was in a bag of clothes earmarked for Goodwill. He got himself a little tangled in it. We eventually got him out, but not before I'd snagged a few pictures.

Please also note that the hairy knee in the picture is not mine. Just had to get that out there.

sometimes you're a tourist with a camera, stealing souls for scrapbooks

Some people thrive on adernaline, seeking out opportunities to push their physical limits- jumping off of clifts, skydiving, diving into shark infested waters with little more than a snorkel and a prayer.

I am not one of those people.

It's not that I don't like adventure, because I truly do. It's just my kind of adventure is the type that comes from long road trips into unchartered territories, experimenting with unfamiliar cuisines, and the bittersweet conclusion of a novel in which I've invested ten days trying to find out who killed so-and-so. The occasional flat tire, raging indigestion, and possible book related paper-cuts not withstanding, I prefer the safe kind of adventure.

I undoubtedly inherited this from my mother. It's not that we're not risk takers, because we are, in an esoteric kind of way. That's why I'm still not over the shock that she and I (along with dear old Pop) went white water rafting this weekend.

Apparently, when she was a teenager in California, my Mom and her family took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. Rafting wasn't incredibly popular at the time, but she somehow got the itch to try it. Thirty years later, she actually did.

We had an incredible time. It was a long day, and we were on the water for a good four hours, so it was physically exhausting. I even got thrown from the raft for good measure, when we unexpectedly hit a flat rock. I wasn't able to get back to the raft because the current was too strong, so I had to float my chubby ass down a few hundred feet of the Lehigh. I was terrified at first, because although I'm a strong swimmer the first few seconds after hitting the water are incredibly disorienting. For one thing, you've just completed an unintentional and unexpected backwards somersault into water that could be anywhere from 6 inches to 6 feet deep. Once your head finally emerges, you're surrounded by spray and moving at a fairly quick pace away from the point you want to be. Trying to stand or swim against the surf is futile, so all you can really go is flop on your back, keep your head above water so that you don't lose your sunglasses, and hope your lifevest isn't defective.

And, if you're me, you get to do all this while hearing the faint laughter of your parents and raftmates as they double over in laughter so exreme that it's inhibiting your rescue.

At the end of the day, I was wet, battered, achy, sunburned, and exhilirated. Not only was our river trip a great bonding experience and a chance to explore a beautiful part of the country, but it was the kind of adventure that required me to sign a waiver, and I did it. I look both ways before crossing one way streets, people. This was big for me.

I wish I had pictures to post, but my Mom took them on one of those disposable waterproof cameras, which means that somewhere around Thanksgiving she'll finish the roll and develop the prints and I'll share them. Until then, I've got my memories, fading bruises, and new appreciation for adrenaline rushes.