What Every Mother Wants: Yard Work
2005-05-10, 4:10 p.m.

Hubby needs to retry that swimsuit, because chances are he lost enough weight over the weekend to fit into it. The edge of our backyard is not exactly a ditch, but the yard dips down and then swoops steeply up, forming a sort of channel. This channel was choked with anonymous brush, honeysuckle, poison ivy, big BIG briars and brambles, young trees� heck, I wouldn�t have been surprised to unearth a body or two. It was also host to a renegade pseudo-compost pile of years of brush clippings, rotting branches, and past-prime Christmas trees. Hubby spent several evenings and half of Saturday cutting, hauling, cutting, hauling, cutting, hauling. He got a big ol� workout.

It was such a great workout that he shared it with me for Mother�s Day. That was my gift. He and I spent all day Sunday finishing the cut n� haul, with the accompanying thrills of body odor, dehydration, and spider bites, not to mention getting the truck stuck in the dip and having to call a friend with an even larger pickup to haul it out. The end results are worth it. Here is the result of our labor, The Brush Pile That Ate The Front Yard.

Note the big honkin� diesel pickup hiding behind the pile to put it all in perspective. It�s one of 40 overpriced trucks parked up and down our street while they hustle to finish construction of the behemoth next door.

Clearing out the brush was a satisfying Mother�s Day activity, for which my family should be grateful considering they otherwise FORGOT it was, in fact, Mother�s Day. It began with me doing the dishes as per usual while Hubby ate cereal while watching cartoons. The kids had wolfed down something non-nutritious and were playing in their rooms. Once the dishes were done, I called them all into the living room and asked them what day it was.

�OH! It�s MOTHER�S DAY! HAPPY MOTHER�S DAY!�

Daughter gave me a rhinestone heart necklace she had bought a week ago with my money. Son gave me a kiss on the cheek. Hubby grinned at me from the couch.

Then they all went right back to whatever they were doing.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the day�s other exciting activity: I vacuumed.

Happy Mother�s Day to meeeeeeee. Rah. It's ok, really...the greatest gift is that I AM a mother. No special day needed to appreciate that.

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