Well, That's One Way To Do It

Before I get into tonight's topic, I'd just like to send a shout-out to my sister-in-law, who is sick.....AGAIN. I'd also like to let McMama know that if she wants to keep showing up in these pages, she needs to return my calls. Unless of course, she never got the message, because my sick sister-in-law took it and promptly forgot about it because she blew the part of her brain responsible for taking messages out her nose as she was trying to clear enough snot to enable her to breathe. In which case, never mind. Call me, McMama!

Okay, so, our house sits on a fairly large piece of property, comparatively speaking. Meaning, we have more square feet of land than most people in the area. And it's a great property, but I've never been fond of the landscaping. (Did I mention that we live in the house in which I grew to quasi-adulthood? Yeah, we bought it from my parents. Which made having sex in the master bedroom for the first time a trifle uncomfortable, but we quickly got over it.) My parents worked long hours and didn't want to have to put much effort into keeping up the yard, so it's minimally landscaped, and what is there doesn't make me do cartwheels. Not only that, but Papa Jo wasn't completely clear, when transferring the property to us, which trees/bushes/plants/other foliage were served by automatic sprinkler and which needed individual attention. So I'm not proud of this, but Oscar and I let a lot of it go, and by last spring, most of it was dead or getting there quickly.

To expedite getting things cleaned up, we hired a local kid to come in and cut everything down. That helped quite a bit, but then we had the problem of getting all of the waste cut into more reasonably sized pieces and hauled away. We did fine for the first week or so, but summer came quickly and neither Oscar nor I was interested in going out to get the refuse into the bins so it could be picked up on trash day. So a year later, most of that yard waste is still sitting in our backyard. Yeah, we're not proud of that, either.

Well, the weather has been so nice lately, and I've been trying so hard to get Turtle outside more, that I've actually started cutting up the dead branches and putting them in the bins. I know! Go me! It actually doesn't take too long to fill the bins, but at the rate I'm going, and with as much crap as is in our yard, we're probably looking at another couple of months before the whole yard is cleared. (Look, I said I wasn't proud, okay? Don't judge me.)

But here's the thing....I'm married to a Boy Scout. This has come in handy on a number of occasions (like when we need a special knot in something....and don't get me started on how sexy Oscar is when he's tying knots, because it's such a stupid thing, and yet....ROWR!!!) but tonight, it was of particular use. Oscar decided, since it has been the perfect temperature in the evening, it might be a fine idea to put together a fire pit and burn off some of the dead branches. So on the way home from dinner, we picked up some marshmellows, and after we put Turtle to bed, Oscar set up a mighty fine fire. We toasted a few marshmellows and then Hotass came out to join us. She had the brilliant idea of bringing out some hot dogs, and even though Oscar and I had just eaten dinner, we couldn't resist the siren song of the hot dog cooked over an open fire. It was the most relaxing thing we have done as a group in quite some time.

It was so relaxing, we're thinking of doing it again. Tomorrow is TAR night, and Snark's Mistress will be coming over to watch with us. Hotass is thinking of bringing her boyfriend by after they have their Date Night. And I'm thinking another fire would be a nice way to cap off the evening. We might even be upgrading to s'mores, provided Hotass remembers to pick up graham crackers. So, we may have let things go, but I'm telling you....we'll get our backyard cleaned up yet.