There will be bumps

Tonight I went to Old Mine with my chum Jenny. I love her. I think we've always known each other. As a matter of fact, I'm often surprised that I'm telling her something she doesn't know about me. I would like to say it's because we were best friends in a former life but I don't believe in reincarnation. So, I will settle for the explanation that God made our souls to know one another. I barely knew her seven years ago and I don't remember why I had her number but I remember thinking she would help me and called he when I was out of gas. Incidentally, she wasn't able to help me that day but the point was I remember feeling confident of her character without really knowing her. After that, I ran into her everywhere and it was always timely. I'd feel this relief seeing a familiar face in a new town.  We both noticed it. There was no coincidence and we knew it. We casually jumped into that friendship like people do when stars align and it was great. God smiled and Satan got busy. Those things go hand in hand. There was the happy perfect memory phase for a few years then the doubts. When that started, I would get too close and see Satans mirages then back up and see Gods hands. I don't know what sabotaged it entirely but something shook the trust. Then I quit. I doubted the friendship and gave up. It was an elephant in the room that I didn't want to face but thankfully the truth won.  She was my sweet potato roll buddy. The one who saw me drunk more than sober (but it was her fault). The one who laughed about my husband frustrations with true soul. The one who welcomed me to my new home with cookies. The one who made my hair pretty and cut it and dyed it and fed me tomato soup or wine all at the same time. The one who let me freak out about a fourth pregnancy and took pictures of my fabulous baby being born. The one who went to breakfast with me the day I found out Dad had a giant tumor. My muse for every philosophical blog written. The one who listened and listened and listened. As I relived this beautiful organic journey I like to call a very special friendship, God told me something about friendship that has changed my perspective forever. He said this special friendship was a gift to do with as I pleased. It was an arresting and weighty thought. We are here with opportunities to share life... or not. It's a choice we make as mothers and wives and friends. We can be present and available and invested or we can judge, carry bitterness and anger and lose trust and ultimately lose relationships. It's complex but simple. I think the craving for acceptance can only be be fulfilled by offering the same acceptance we crave. Of course, as soon as I sought to right my relationship with her Jenny was right there to meet me with her arms open. That's why I love her I guess. The acceptance of me and the trust of my acceptance of her. I love my people! 

The truth about in ground trampolines.

Two and a half years ago, we finally (drumroll) bought a house after five years of renter/landlord hell. I am literally incapable of resisting trampolines, call it a childhood nostalgia, a weakness, an addiction I don't know. So we bought one. A terrible little thing that barely bounced. It felt like whiplash every time I tried to jump on it. On top of that, it was wedged onto our inherited homemade paver patio converting a natural eyesore into a veritable piece of visual pollution. Yes, my yard was abysmal.

 A scant month later, a straight line wind blew the crappy trampoline into the side of our neighbors house causing extensive damage and trauma to the inhabitants. Apparently it's really loud and scary when a trampoline is slammed into the second story of your home making giant holes in the siding. It happened on the one night of summer we were not home. The neighbors piled mangled pieces back over the fence and we shoved the trampoline parts into our garage until we "dug a hole". 

I always talked about when we were going to recess the trampoline with a casual air. As though one day it might strike my fancy and I might whip a hole out and set it up that day... Which interestingly never struck my fancy. And so two years went by. 

People asked about our trampoline status and I would shrug and make a vague reference to digging a hole which would cause Jody to frown at me and then I would frown back. I varied my strategies with him, sometimes I might raphsodize and bat my eyelashes others I might make wild claims about the foolishness of every other alternative. Regardless of my approach, Jody would either redirect conversation or become engrossed with TV. I considered it progress. Always progress. 

This spring I got a wild hair and became hell bent on the sorry state of our back yard. We sat sipping beverages one Saturday morning and I commented that I would like to destroy our strange patio with an even stranger reputation (my neighbors have scary nicknames and scandalizing stories about the previous owner and his many girlfriends and the building of the paver patio) and dig the trampoline hole. Jody nodded and continued sipping his beverage. I led him outside to try to inspire vision but I perceived a weak response. He returned indoors and proceeded to puruse his IPad. I trailed him like any self respecting wife and exploded that it appeared we were never going to do anything about the back yard. He looked at me like I was insane and asked if I wanted to demo the patio right that minute and I said that yes I did. 

I would like to point out that he did not explain to me why he thought I was insane but by the same token I did not ask. So, we went out to the patio with a sledge hammer and started to demo a weird little wall built around it.

Now this picture was actually after we knocked down the wall with the sledge hammer. Yes, I was awesome. Nobody takes videos of me like I do with the kids. Sigh.
That was spring...
It is now July. I cannot say exactly what I had planned or how we were to execute our project when I grabbed the sledge hammer.  Only that it was rather dreamy and fairy godmotherish. After the sledge hammer stage I unsurprisingly became languid and disinterested. Everything started to look hard and time consuming and... expensive.
That is the fabulous thing about my marriage though. Well, at least I think it's fabulous. When I lose momentum, Jody gains it. The next thing I knew, Jody was designing a new patio and putting our yard into auto cad. He was asking me to get concrete bids. I got excited.
All I had to do was remove the pavers, then someone would come make our patio. It sounded "easy". I have no earthly idea why I'm a Pollyanna or how I came to be this way. I had a tougher childhood 'work sweat and tears wise' than any of my peers.I have been unwed and pregnant, my husband has had cancer, barely survived while floating an underwater house for five years flipping furniture to make the payments, made it through Jodys brief unemployment, supported him in the hardest subsequent choices he ever made and have four kids which oddly people have the most respect for me for. I have not lived a charmed life of ease and leisure but it's like I'm a rainbow chaser "this will be easy" always pops into my head. Every single time. Ask Jody. The worst part is... I REALLY BELIEVE me... and so I got ideas and told Jody how nice it would be to have a high patio without a back step. He furrowed his brow and reworked it out and warned me it would take extra concrete...(first warning sign). I told him the plans looked lovely. He has a soft spot for me. I'm not gonna lie. Then the concrete guys started telling us prices for dirt because after all we would need yards and yards of dirt for a base under a high patio. Brilliant me, I asked Jody if we could use all the sand from the old patio and dig the trampoline hole and use that dirt.
"Well... of course" he said "theoretically".
Something very key to understand about Jody is to pay attention to every word he says. Dissect it, psychoanalyse it and for sweet pity's sake, don't discount it. I did pull up about half of the pavers and got them out of the way... then I left for a three day field trip to Estes Park with Eden which turned out to be Jody's three day window to fill the patio forms with soil before the concrete truck came. And so... Jody dug... And dug... And dug. I am dropping my head in shame remembering this. He shoveled like a maniac. When I left it was like this:

When I returned it was like this:

Note how he relocated ALL of that sod so carefully.

So I dug with him. We did a lot of digging then God did a lot of raining. Soon we had a lovely mud pit for Stella. 

In the meantime they poured our new patio.

And I thought of a new project to go with the patio since we had extra bricks:

A flower bed. I wanted to build it and he tried to teach me but ultimately I did not meet his standards and my work had to be scrapped and redone. It was sad. I wasted five hours of sweating in the pouring heat. He also ripped out all of the ugly gray wiring for the previous owners infamous hot tub. Yes, infamous. Everything about him was infamous. He took living in a fishbowl literally. Our yard is roughly the size of a postage stamp so people love to call where all of the neighbors yards join "a fishbowl". He swam and frolicked in the fishbowl for all to see with all of his lovers. Don't judge me for gossiping. He clearly wanted to leave a legacy. Now his legacy is recorded for all posterity.  All that grass on the right half of the picture was from the trampoline hole. Jody saved it and moved it which will come up again later in this tale of woe. See my despicable ugly tan and brown house? That will also come up later in this tale of woe.

Jody had dug that hole for weeks. Men stopped him in church to talk about it, others stood in our yard with their mouths agape and they all said the same things. Big men, little men, tall men, short men.. It was always "you dug that by hand? With a shovel?" It's a small town, so I know it doesn't mean as much as say in New York City but he's kind of revered and pitied as the man who loved his wife too much around here. I developed a bit of a stoop from curling in shame so frequently. I avoided talking about the pit because well I felt like an idiot. That stupid little chirpy voice in my head mocked me "it will be so easy" became nightmarish with a fast forward chipmunk voice and never stopped playing. Jody would come home day after day discovering I hadn't dug much again and put on dirty clothes and dig like a beaten man. His wrists became numb at night and he could not sleep due to the pain in his wrists and hands. For real. Stella would dig extra holes in the side of the hole. Not kidding. Then Jody announced we had reached 3 feet on the high side and could dig a sump in the center. He is an engineer who designs drainage and retention ponds and such for a living.  I am me which is less valuable in this endeavor than a 14 year old boy. I ineptly followed directions and asked lots of annoying questions. We dug a center hole deeper and used a level to completely level the peremiter then we sloped it towards the hole in the center and filled the sump with river rock. After that, we covered it in landscape fabric. Then we covered the whole pit with river rock to repel weeds. I was tired that day and like I said, Jody would have been way better off with a paid laborer or even an Amazonian wife. 

Then we ordered the expensive trampoline that he now blames me for... a Magic Circle. We went ahead and bought 300 pounds of sandbags to anchor it "just in case"

Jody explained to me how we would build a berm around the circumference to direct water away from the hole. We used concrete siding as a form and we bermed and bermed and bermed. By this point I felt like a fool ten times over for even tackling something so complicated, labor intensive and just plain out stressful.  It was around this time that I had house painters paint my house a color unapproved by the HOA. Lovely isn't it? I needed that stress. Another Pollyanna move. "It's beautiful! the whole neighborhood will be knocking on my door to ask what that lovely color is." Nope, try the neighborhood will go into an uproar and report you and you will get a call after its 90% done to cease painting from the HOA. As a side note, farm girls don't really understand the whole HOA thing. It's foreign. 

I'm still waiting to find out if I will have to pay to have it repainted. $$$$$$$$$$!

Then the sprinkler guy Russ came. He and Jody had to dig up the whole F@&$?$@ yard again to move and redirect sprinklers.

See our berm? I won't go into details about a delivery man being greeted by me in a swimsuit when I had some supplies delivered and then having it referenced to clarify who I was by the store owner when I called back for more the next week. Mortifying. I'm too old for this. 

I am here to tell you the berming was a nightmare and we still have one trouble spot.

My house was a never ending mud pit. Dirt and sand everywhere. 

See where we removed all that sod Jody tried to save? Yeah we had to so we could slope the ground for drainage. The sod had already completely taken root because of all of the rain. That was awful and redundant. Jody does not like redundant. 

Then we finally ordered the sod. When that sod came it was like Christmas in July. We were so sick of mud! The whole family laid the sod hours after it was delivered. It required more shoveling and leveling but we were maniacs.  I think it was because we thought we were crossing the finish line of the worst home project ever.

I so wish I could say "happily ever after" at this point in the story but today...

We had to install a French drain across half of our yard.

Because our trampoline had impeded the yard drainage and we had a stinky muddy sod mess going on. That's the truth about putting in an in ground trampoline. I'm sure you are waiting for the part about how I made it all up to Jody... Stay tuned. I'm going to do my very best. Right now I'm just focusing on getting this giant fountain installed in the corner of my yard. Jody said no... But I think it will be "really easy" and I have the perfect spot.

Freedom

Independence day this year is hard for me. I watched the fireworks last night and wondered if it will have completely devolved into a show within my lifetime. Yes, I'm a toxic mix of Eyore and melodrama all wrapped into the human form. It occurs to me often that people don't want to hear what I think or how I feel about hot issues but then I realize that being silent is what causes a lack of dialogue and a lack of respect for people who are different. Just as there are people on Facebook without a single southern friend and are never presented with the cultural significance of the rebel battle flag, there are also people without a single Facebook friend who disagrees out loud with the process used to legalize gay marriage last week which was unconstitutional. I was raised by a couple of patriots. Understanding the value of freedom of religion was breathed into me like oxygen. My dad carried a copy of the constitution around in his shirt pocket. I can't say that I know the constitution, I just trust it. I understand the position of people fighting for this legalization and I respect the fact that people have not been treated fairly. Of course, I believe this stems from the government ever dipping their greedy fingers into marriage by creating licenses to prevent black people from marrying white people. I simply do not agree with the notion that government should mess with marriage. They could create legal agreements associated with marriage and legislate that all day. While many people in our culture today feel that gay rights are more important than religious freedom I can't agree. The worst part is, I don't think choosing was necessary. Patience and a careful re-navigation of separating marriage from government was the only peaceful respectful path America could have taken. Perhaps unintended consequences were considered, but it really doesn't seem like it. I'm being asked to choose and so I do. I choose Christ. It's rather ironic actually. We have this history of King Henry the VIII who manipulated everything to make marriage work the way he wanted it to and to circumvent the rules of the Church all because he wanted his interpretation of marriage to supersede the church (sound familiar?). Some tough as nails Christians wanted to have freedom from his corruption of an institution created by God so they fled to America. They wanted the right for the church to be free of control of the government. As an aside, I freely admit that Jesus never said this would work. He never said we would be able to create a freedom of religion successfully. He actually warned us of the opposite. And as I sit feeling slightly fearful of the future of my religion in this country, I also criticize myself and ask why I expect a perfect situation to express my religion while Christians are beheaded and imprisoned in other countries right now. Of course I could say the same of gay people who fight for the right to marry while gay people the world over are being killed for their sexuality.  Regardless, that is how I feel. This is where I simply must stand. Yes, the freedom to worship Jesus and submit to the authority of the Bible is quite simply the most important freedom to me. I know I'm not alone. I also know that I really have nothing to fear. Even if someday churches are shut down for not officiating gay marriages or Christians are fined or imprisoned for not compromising their faith. What happens to us on this earth is not eternal. Happiness is fleeting as Solomon said. So, I'll try to keep my eyes on Him and honor Him the very best I can, knowing I was made for more.

http://www.history.com/topics/mayflower