A for Effort

As many of you know, we are currently in a rented house in Baltimore City, and will be moving to a rented space outside of the city June 1. Our landlord is a nice fellow, and has been great as far as landlords go, so we generously (I now realize VERY generously) offered to show the house for him the last 2 months we'd be living here.

It's been a big pain. It makes me clean my house when I'd rather sleep, and we've had various annoyances involving the trickledown effects of poor communication between real estate agents and the home owner. However, we've allowed it to continue.

We have three showings tomorrow, which means--time to spruce up the house. Again. Frank was historically the one to do the yardwork, but at some point when I started having a few days at home without him, it became something I enjoyed as well. It's been a rainy, and also busy couple of weeks, and so I will admit that even while feeling good, I have let the lawn slip away from me.

We use a push-mower, because we have this weird little 5 foot by 7 foot grass terrace in the front, and a fairly small, easy-to-mow yard in the back. After standard pick-up and chlorox wiping in the house, I started by hacking away at the now eight inch high grass on the terrace. While a bit slower going than usual, it wasn't a big deal. Then I started plucking (no joke) three-foot dandilion stalks from the mulch areas. This is the most overgrown our yard has been at any point of living here, but seriously, there must be something in the rainwater.

I came up with a pretty good-sized pile of weeds, hand-plucked the edges of the patch of grass, and moved on to the back yard after chatting a while with a neighbor. I figured the break was neccessary (I have been making a conscious effort to pace myself better lately), and that it'd help me to plow right through.

Well, I did have to plow, but I wouldn't describe it as "right through".

After grunting and sweating in the 5pm sun for what seemed like an embarassingly long time, the push mower's handle and my back simultaneously approached breaking in half--one due to a missing screw, and one due to the human self-sacrifice that is now my life. I was able to make one loop around the perimeter of the yard.

I conceited to the fact that finishing the small front tuft of grass closest to perspective buyers would be the closest the lawn would look to polished, threw the mower at the fence, and surrendered to the couch. Game over.

So, to review, here is a perfect analogy for what pregnancy seems like to most dummies (like me 5+ months ago) who coo about it, but haven't tried it, and what pregnant woman actually experience:

The picture-perfect front yard--complete with happy, rosy-colored roses:

...and the behind-the-scenes, tired, overgrown, gassy, irritable backyard:

I tried.