Bah!

The perils of living in the Southeast.



After what we went through last summer, I am not looking forward to this.

Embarassing beauty

Our yard is in serious disarray right now. Between our trip to Europe, and multiple trips since then attending to various things, Michael being in trial, and me swamped with work - we haven't exactly been able to keep on top of our house maintenance duties.

The result, sadly enough is that we now have grass high enough in the backyard to probably qualify as a natural grassland. It's (no lie) at least knee high in one spot. And yes, that is a serious code violation. The front yard isn't much better - but it's gone to seed, and is now embarassingly high, but it isn't that bad - ankle high or so I suppose. Oh sure, people shake their heads when they pass our yard - and I'm sure they mumble about "those neighbors" but look - we've been busy.

Michael was all set to mow the yard this weekend, and started to use the weedeater first. Hmm. It apparently has a faulty switch, and refuses to turn on. O.k. so then he starts to use the lawnmower - and when he pulls the starter it refuses to go. As it turns out a wire (note - I know *nothing* about lawnmowers, including how to start them) was rusted through because it wasn't put away properly and has been raining probably every day for the last month. So all of our lawn equipment is dead.

So I talk to the lawn service who does the neighbors next door - because the grass is so high, they want $150 to get the yard mowed, and then $50 every two weeks after that. Uh. That's a lot of $$. I can buy a whole new lawn mower for that.

And we won't even address the weeds growing in the patio. Sadly, all the flowers I planted are pretty much dried up little crisps - as it turns out you need to water the plants for them to manage. Even though it rains every day. Go figure.

So this morning while walking outside to the laundry room (the entrance is only accessible through the backyard - yet another pain about this house I'm ready to give up), I see this enormous beautiful flower growing in between the bricks. It's nearly a foot high, and definitely shouldn't be there, but I needed that little glimpse of accidental beauty today, even if it was a bit embarassing.

The Peanut Butter Solution

As I have mentioned before, my husband is quite a bit older than me. As in "he had sex before I was born" older than me. Most of the time, it's not a big deal - as due to the confluence of 'life experience' I've always been considered as older or more mature than I am in true chronological age. Part of that is inevitable. I was holding down two jobs at 14 to help support my family, and finished college at 18. There really wasn't much choice to not grow up in a hurry.

There are times though, when our age difference is incredibly apparent and that usually ends up being the result of a passing referent of popular culture. When I was still toddling around in diapers, he was entrenched in punk music and was leaving home for college. There will be times when he, or I, will say don't you remember that song/movie/video/event - it was really popular in 198x? I was in "fourth grade"/"graduate school" then. There are a lot of times when I just don't get his referents - his experiences predate mine, and I feel at a loss sometimes that I don't identify with his music, his movies, his experiences. He vaguely can identify with mine, as he was at least aware on some level of what was popular when I was a kid. While my mom was fighting off hordes of other women in line desperate to buy their child a cabbage patch doll for Christmas, he was working in Motgomery Wards in another state trying to calm the hordes of women trying to claw each other to bits over the latest shipment of the dolls. He remembers the Challenger coverage interrupting his college studies - I remember my second grade teacher breaking down in giant sobs and all of us trying to understand what happened.

So I was trying to explain the movie, The Peanut Butter Solution to him, and I get a blank stare.

I didn't remember the exact story line, but I knew it had something to do with a kid whose hair falls out and then he and his friend put some peanut butter concoction on it, and he wakes up and his hair grows really fast. And his friend, who had a girl's name, puts the peanut butter goop 'down there' (the first inkling I had that pubic hair existed) and hair starts growing out the end of his pants. Then there is a wild kidnapping and he is strapped to a machine that makes magic paintbrushes.

Randomly, I find this film referenced on another blog today, and I had that moment of "Aha!" I'm not really crazy. This movie does exist.

Does anyone else remember this movie? Or is it just me? Are there other crazy movies you have tried to explain to someone and you feel like maybe you're the only person in the world who has seen this?