One

I’ve become the farmer in the dell.  I was super excited to get a good look at this yard once the snow finally melted. My one requirement for whatever we rented was there had to be a yard for the kids.

It wasn’t a pretty sight.  What wasn’t a cigarette butt was an old beer bottle and it looked like no one had raked the leaves since the Johnson administration. The last tenants must’ve been college kids, crack-heads or both. It took me a week just to clean it up. 

At least under all the trash in the borders was a wealth of hosta trying desperately to grow, so that’ll be pretty later on this summer….unfortunately, the “lawn” was about 98 percent weeds.

Now, you know I have a flea-like attention span, so halfway through reading the labels on various household poisons or yard products, I tend to get bored and just do what I want. The result is usually something along the lines of dead plants (remember the banana tree I sprayed with Windex? It was dead within thirty minutes,) or nerve damage (remember the Raid incident at our last house?)

Anyway, this time I was extra careful; I put on gloves and safety goggles and thoroughly read the directions on the bottle of whatever it was. (I don’t know, I found it in the garage and it had a picture of a dead dandelion on it so I figured it would work.)  I am proud to report that what just one week ago was a weed field is now a weed field with large yellow patches.

I also found a big wooden box full of plant life buried under the brush.  I cleaned it out and filled it up with sand for the babies, and it’s just nifty.  As far as the inside of the house goes, well, at least it’s clean. That is if you don’t count the kitchen, which is so covered with jelly it almost seems like a pattern in the linoleum. The bedrooms are terrible, but all anyone does is sleep in those, so who cares? The living room is no good, either.  Don’t get me started on the bathroom.

Two

We did it! At 3:15 this afternoon, we signed the papers, handed over our life savings and bought the little running apparel store that Mike has been managing since we came back.  Wow. I'm reeling. It happened so fast! Ever since he got the job, we’d been fantasizing about how fun it would be to actually own it, just have a nice little business and be the boss for a change.

Well, out of the clear blue sky a few weeks back, the owner said he was tired of it and wanted to find a buyer…and I guess the rest is history.  What a huge change. Who’da thunk a few months ago, when he was coaching basketball in front of thousands of screaming Poles (most of them screaming for his head on a plate) that he’d have his own business by summer?

I think it’s going to be fun.  Please, God, let it not go bankrupt as quickly as the Pekaes Basketball Club did….

When we got home from the bank, I hollered, "Let’s have a huge party, with champagne and lobster and chocolate cake!”  He muttered, "How ‘bout we sell some of these running shoes first?"  What a stick in the mud.  I guess it’s understandable, considering he’s never done anything but coach.  But sales, recruiting, what’s the difference?  At least this time we don’t have Russian mafiosos breathing down our necks.  Not yet, anyway.

Time to sink or swim…  God Bless the American Dream!

Three

This morning I woke up to clinking, scuffling sounds coming from the kitchen and I shot out of bed, sure that Finbar was playing with knives or a burgler was getting ready to kill us all.  I grabbed a golf club and snuck around the corner, only to find the two kids at the kitchen table enjoying Rice Krispies with milk and sugar and tall glasses of juice. Meg got everything all by herself. She even poured the milk and the juice, no spills, and Finny had a bib on. I almost burst into tears. I’m completely superfluous to them. Did they plan it? Did they get together last night and agree that today was the day they didn’t need mommy any more?

So that’s what happened this week, not the most exciting letter in the world, but I’m a little distracted by the fact that the Emmys are on tonight and I haven't a thing to wear.

Four

Mike and I took our tax rebate and bought magazine subscriptions with it. I’m still fuzzy on why we even got a rebate, but knowing the answer would involve reading the front page of the newspaper and I’m not about to start that at this stage in my life.  

 Every day now, I wait in sweaty anticipation for the mail to come. The postman won’t even come up to the house anymore, he fears me so.

"Are they here? Are they here?" I shriek as I fly out the front door.

He clumsily pulls out his mace, but I am too quick, hell-bent on my mission. I rip through the neighbors’ credit card bills (and they are considerable, I might add,) in rabid search for my magazines. So far, nothing, and I cry bitter, bitter tears each evening as I realize once again that if I want to know how Gwyneth Paltrow does her eye shadow, I’m gonna just have to watch ‘E’.  I go to the grocery store and the glossy pages call to me.

"Buy me! Buy me!" They sweetly beckon.

"Oh no," I think, as I stroke their slick covers, "for soon, you will be mine for a fraction of the news-stand price." 

But another day passes, and my sweet tell-all mistress has broken my heart once again.

Got a little carried away there, sorry.

Finny’s up, I gotta go.

Five

Last night at dinner, Meg informed me that Finbar had colored all over my bedroom wall.

“He did?”  I asked wearily.

“Yeah, he colored purple and he made a hand turkey…”

 The words were only halfway out when she realized her mistake.

“He made a hand turkey?  Your eight month old brother?”

“Ummmmmm…uh huh.”

“Meg.”

“Hmm?”

“Finbar  didn’t make the hand turkey, did he?”

“Josie did it.”

“Josie wasn’t even here today.”

“Can I watch a movie?”

“Meggie, did you color all over my wall?  Tell the truth and you won’t get in trouble.”

 Pause.

“No.”

No paint or crayons for two days.  The whole episode is reminiscent of the time Anne Tewes and I wrote our names all over the outside of her house with orange crayons. We couldn’t figure out how we got caught. We were just Meg’s age, too. 

It’s a darn good hand turkey, though.

© Katie McCollow, 2004 • katie.mccollow@mac.com