1. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc (blog...)
It seems the time has gotten away from me. My last blog post was in March. I'm a disgrace to the world of non-profit complainers who believe they have a story worth telling.
It seems most days I would rather read a book and fall asleep than tell you (the anonymous reader) about the time I had to get on the roof at 6:45 am in my business casual clothes to duct tape the fan exhaust door (what do you call this?) closed so birds would stop opening it, breaking through the flexible tubing and making a nest above my son's room (to this run-on sentence I will add that I have an unexplained extraordinary fear of heights).
So I post now. Not because I have anything particularly clever to share, but because I think about this blog all the time, and how each month fades into the next one without a peep from me. It's become this force that judges me and calls me lazy. And underachieving.
I suppose as a matter of catch-up, I could present you with a few high points from the land of Clintang. With no lead-in or finesse at all, here they are.
Trees
I don't remember if I've ever shared my battle against the encroaching nature in my extreme backyard (the area beyond the fence that is technically part of our property). Every year, I vow that I will not let the hill turn into a tick-infested weed forest. Hand-pulling weeds works until you go out of town for a weekend or two and come back to find a jungle that you can't traverse because of an extreme fear of ticks and their dirty little diseases. Our backyard neighbor has hostile feelings about the nature that blows weed seeds in her yard all day.
One day, in a genius passive aggressive move, the neighbor sent a local kid to our front door to ask if we wanted to pay him to clean up the nature, specifically the line of anemic pine trees that looked like they had been starved and beaten. Since the price was right, we agreed. The project took some time since he didn't come back for six months, then when he did, he would randomly stop in and chop something down when he felt like it. But for $200, who was really going to complain?
The day he chopped down my three sickly trees, I went into a state of mourning. I'm not a fan of cutting down trees at all. I agreed only under the condition that I would replant something immediately. That was, of course, before I saw how much trees cost. Or that the cheap ones were only 12 inches tall and would take 70 years to grow.
After weeks of looking at the barren hill, we decided to take a family trip on a whim to Home Depot at 6 pm on a Friday night. What we found was crazy cheap giant trees. We had to have them. We spared no moment to think about transportation. A good price is a good price. We considered sticking one in the back of our van with 70 percent of the tree hanging out. This idea was rejected since I have extreme anxiety about dropping things out of the back of vans or trucks (ask me about mattress transportation panics the next time I see you).
Also, it turns out an adolescent tree weighs 300 pounds. We bought two of them. Lucky for us, Home Depot was willing to rent us a pick-up truck to get them home (remember the truck-transport anxiety!!) Unlucky for us, they wanted it back in an hour and forty-five minutes. Here is a little photo documentation.
I made a call on the way home to ask for some help with the unloading. Since they had to use a forklift to put them in the truck, we anticipated some personal challenges. Another unlucky, we are antisocial and therefore only have one or two people we can ever call. Our helper willingly arrived shortly after (yea!).
It was two Clintons and one thin female (how do you like this title, Lars?) versus the two 300-pound Norway Spruces with arm-shredding needles. The Clintons and the thin female were brutalized but they won. By winning I mean we somehow rolled the trees off the truck in semi-darkness while getting crushed and generating hernias in the process. Unfortunately, getting them off the truck was all we could really manage that night. By the next day, one of those bastard trees rolled down the hill to an evil place that only Olympic weight-lifters would have a chance to retrieve it.
The tree in the background was perched on the precipice, just waiting to start rolling.
We called on our thin female friend to once again assist in the tree domination (right after we got home from a full-day soccer tournament). It tore us to shreds and took hours. We would roll it a few inches, then have it fall back down on us. Hours later, the neighbor told me she watched us out the window the whole time. She thought for sure we would never get it. But get it we did. Take that.
This is when we thought we could use a dolly. Turns out you can't.
He's not peeing in that hole. Here is proof the tree finally made it to the top of the hill after hours and hours of grunting and hamstring tears.
Victory.
Next up... birds
Infiltration
Several months ago, I posted a blog about a bird that had come down into our bathroom fan. I took a video of his moment of release. Turns out he was not there by accident. In March, when we were out of town and my sister was watching our dirty cats, another bird got stuck behind the fan. This one was bigger. I had to walk her through the release over the phone. This is not a small thing to ask someone to do.
We discovered these birds were lifting up the fan exhaust flap on the side of our house and coming in. While exploring for a place to build their nest, they went too far and fell down into the fan shoot a floor below. Once they had both done it once, they decided they would just peck a hole through the flexible tubing and build a nest below it in the attic (consequently right above Eli's closet). When we discovered them (I insisted there was a raccoon up there, Mark said birds... whatever), we (Mark) had to climb up into the attic that we have been avoiding for 5 years and try some handyman moves to keep the jerks out.
We learned that starlings are persistent and will rip through mesh in order to live with the Clintons. What's one thing that will keep them out? Trashy duct tape on the exhaust door on the side of your house.
Cats
Our struggles with our two cats, Lorenzo and Fat Linda, are well documented. I've got to say, they've definitely put me off cats for life (not that I was particularly ever "on").
Since I've already been in front of the computer too long tonight, I'll leave out the boring details and just tell you that Lorenzo, the most awful cat alive, has been peeing and pooping (or dookie-ing) up our house like crazy. We are at the end of our patience with him, even if he has been a Clinton for 11 years. I finally took him back to the vet (sending him over the feline spending allowance for life). He doesn't have a urinary tract infection (of course). They are checking on his blood and will get back to us ($$$!). So far, it sounds like he is basically just a jerk.
They gave me some reading material on how to address this behavior in your cat. They recommend litter box retraining. Here is an excerpt from the instructions. Pay special attention to the line about "just stop praising and ignore the cat."
I might have been going about this cat ownership thing all wrong. I'm pretty sure I verbally abuse our cats daily and they wouldn't give a crap if I ignored them.
I told Lorenzo this morning that I'm not speaking to him anymore, in fact I can't even look at him. I'm pretty sure he just peed on my bathmat.
On Cooking
Also well documented are my struggles with cooking. Why this comes so easily to some and not to others, I'll never know. I recently found an app that pulls together a bunch of food blogs and websites from all over. It's fairly spectacular. In fact, it's somehow convinced me that that I can cook. I have only to select the right thing to make.
I've since implemented Sunday Adventurous Cooking days. I pull something from the app and attempt to make it.
Tonight's attempt gives you a fair idea of how is going so far.
Now that I made myself sit down and type this post, what I've produced is a stream-of-consciousness type of verbal vomit. Way too much information in one blog. Not much of it particularly interesting.
In case you skipped the middle, I'll summarize for you:
- Cats and birds successfully annoying us.
- Home improvement projects need only determination and a willingness to destroy your body.
- I can't cook for sh*# (my mom is appalled at my fake cuss here).
If I ever come back to my blog again, I may tell you about a four-day knitting conference I recently attended...
