Stumble it!
May 21, 2007
I Lied When I Said It Would Be Fun
I christened this past weekend The Immaculate Glamore Home Extravaganza! and publicized it well in advance. I bought real Cokes for the boys to drink in honor of the occasion, although in general I’m violently opposed to the consumption of sugary carbonated beverages. As a final touch, I rigged up the iPod and speakers to blare the boys’ favorite songs (except those by Weird Al) in the driveway. There was an undeniable party atmosphere hovering around our house.
Early Saturday morning, Finn, Drew and Porter had been won over by the enormous preparation and my constant assurances that they were about to experience “a weekend you won’t forget.”
But as soon as Bill and I pulled out the pruners, the leaf blower, the ladder, the hedge trimmers, the hoses, the rakes and the wheelbarrow, they recognized the weekend was really about yard work. Unfortunately for them, the fact that they’d caught on didn’t provide an escape. We were all laboring together.
Porter derived a modicum of enjoyment from climbing the ladder while Bill held it and poking under the gutters with a stick to loosen the unsightly debris. He grew pouty when we forbade him from actually climbing on the roof, so we diverted him by letting him use the leaf blower to blow all the gutter trash into a pile. He spent the next hour sorting through the pile, pulling out legoes, balls, nuts, interestingly shaped sticks, and other treasures, which he set aside until the trash pile was reduced by half. When he wasn’t looking we bagged his “treasure” and hid it in the neighbor’s trashcan.
Meanwhile, Finn used the electric hedge trimmer to prune the azaleas and Drew piled the cut branches in the wheelbarrow. We let Finn shear the azaleas however he wanted, figuring that the poorly executed X-treme pruning he favored was better than no pruning at all. I followed behind them and raked the leaves out from under the bushes so we could fertilize them.
As I raked, I unearthed numerous balls, mainly baseballs. Together they represented the entire life cycle of the baseball, from brand new to scuffed and worn to decayed. The squashed piece of corroded leather drew plenty of attention, especially when Drew poked it with a stick and ants scuttled out of it. However, there is a time and a place for science, and the Extravaganza! was not that place. I ordered them to finish the pruning.
The boys were flagging so we gave them a short lunch break and some Coke. We headed back outside and I switched the music to U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” thinking that the combination of the caffeine, sugar and a martial drum beat might encourage them to quicken their pace a little.
“Time to wash windows!” I trilled. “And I bought the FUN kind of window cleaner!”
Finn gave me a sullen look. “I can’t believe you just used the words ‘fun’ and ‘window cleaner’ in the same sentence,” he said. “That’s so uncool.”
As a result of his surliness, we assigned Finn the task of removing the screens from the windows, and gave Drew and Porter the privilege of using the Windex Outdoor cleaner. We set each of them up with a hose and a bottle of cleaner. The bottle screws onto the hose and has a knob that turns the cleaner on and off. They sprayed the windows with water, turned the knob and covered the glass with suds, then rinsed the windows.
The beauty of the Windex Outdoor is also its drawback– it works so much like a watergun that if you are an eight-year-old boy in possession of one, and your parents go in the back yard to start working on the windows there, thus leaving you unsupervised, you might forget that your objective is to clean the windows and not to squirt your twin brother in the genitals.
At least that’s the way it happened at our house.
After the windows were done Bill and I let the boys watch a movie, and they promptly fell asleep. We fertilized the azaleas in peace then woke the guys for a celebratory screening of Shrek the Third.
Our Extravaganza! was a great success. Rather than counting pruned bushes or cleaned windows, I decided the following was the best measurement of our accomplishments:
Total balls recovered:
From gutter:
8 baseballs
From bushes:
2 footballs
5 tennis balls (2 in advanced stages of decomposition)
3 golf balls
7 baseballs
1 wiffle ball
And three grimy, exhausted boys.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBack URI
May 21st, 2007 at 10:30 am, jenny uk Says:
ooooh send them round to mine, we have so much garden stuff to do and the windows, well I can barely see out of the one I’m next to!
May 21st, 2007 at 10:33 am, Clearlykels Says:
That sounds like a wonderful weekend. I am definitely jealous of the Shrek the Third screening. I spent mine in C-ville watching my sister graduate and checking out my brother’s apartment on the corner for next year. Hmm, now I want some clean windows!
May 21st, 2007 at 11:41 am, VHMom Says:
Great weekend! It sounds like the “Family Fun Day” my husband got the girls psyched up for a couple of years ago. We got alot of yard work done as well, soon as the girls decided they were in for it no matter what. Now the baby girl actually loves to work in the yard…you may have added to the list of goals for the boys! At least, if they do grow up to be drunken hobos, they know what the underneath of a bush SHOULD look like!
May 21st, 2007 at 12:04 pm, Peeved Michelle Says:
I am definitely going to try that outdoor window cleaner - much cheaper than paying the window washer guy.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:33 pm, Slushturtle Says:
So this is what I have to look forward to…
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:51 am, Laura Says:
Lovely. Truly- I’m in awe. Maybe mine are too young to get it, but my version of this usually starts with “Who wants to dig in the mud and help mama?” and ends with “Ooo. Don’t step on that. Eeek. Please? That’s a flower mama planted. No, you can’t pick it yet. No, I can’t play baseball. Please don’t pull the caterpillar into pieces- he’s not spaghetti. Please don’t put that on your sister, she doesn’t like spiders. No, I can’t get you a popsicle.”
Then I make them go find their father so I can do the yard work in piece.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:41 pm, KLee Says:
I’m in awe, because I think I would be Finn in this scenario. I feel rather surly when I’m forced to do yardwork. I don’t even think the liberal application of verboten sugary substances would lighten my surl. So, I’m very glad that you got Finn to participate at all. You are a better woman than I am, obviously.
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm, Susu Says:
I guess the squirting w/Windex cleaner subbed as a bath that night??
We’ve done the same thing as far as enlisting the boys’ help in the yard, but we all come inside at dark, get showers and pjs on, then drive to Pelham Sonic (still in pjs!!) and eat in the car while we peer out the windows at the old “muscle” cars that gather each Saturday night.
Almost as much fun as going to the drive-in in Argo - try it if you haven’t. $10/carload for two new flicks, plus take your own grill, chairs, etc. for a night of fun with friends. We’re all totally ready for summer.