Monthly Archives: October 2017

It’s Too Bad I Can’t Mow at Night

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Okay, I am too busy to be playing the middle between two lawn junkies. One keeps his at a constant three inches, the other keeps his so short that I’m not certain actual blades of grass are growing. I think he may have literally hit dirt, and one good dust-nado will take out whatever green is left of his lawn.
I like to keep my crop of earth somewhere in the middle of Naked and Manicured, and by middle, I mean: if my grass is around five inches tall, I consider it a win.
This morning, while driving back from dumping Bubs unceremoniously upon his hallowed educational grounds and returning to the house where a hot shower before work and hopefully some magical coffee which someone-other-than-me had procured — and there isn’t such a Someone, but a girl can dream — awaited, I mulled my To Do list.
Crestfallen, I realized the first thing on the list was the lawn.
Thanks to recent rains and a lack of interest on my part, I may have had substantial grassy growth in need of maintenance.
I thunked upon it: “Work all day. Bubs’ tae know do. Work next day. Bubs’ tae kwon do. Work some more. Dishes. Good night, work some more? Really? Then Bubs’ whatever-else-Bubs-has. Oh, and laundry. Crap, and more work! Therefore, I can schedule the lawn for…eleven days from now…or…” I realized, “This morning …meaning, two hours — one-and-a-half if I don’t shower, and oh, that can not happen — in which to mow.”
Recap: before work at 11, I need to have scalped the acreage.
I ran the numbers twice more, looking for a loophole. I had none.
So I did what any good mom does: I panicked, opening the garage to release the Deere and quickly ride the plains. Whew! And an hour to spare!
But in my Atta-Girl moment, I realized I’d forgotten the ditch, the seemingly endless ditch, waving its four foot tall fingers nearly beneath my nose in a taunting gesture. I wanted to return the favor with a digit of my own, but I didn’t.
The ditches require the push mower; therefore, I pushed.
Did I mention the wind? Or the dust? Or the endless stream of truckers doing whatever-they-do-in-the-Out-There during daylight hours honking repeatedly as they passed their gigantic truck tire mere inches from my struggling hide?
Annoying! Weird! Dangerous! But oddly flattering.
But no, no, random honking in the Out There was too strange to be complimentary.
And so I grumbled as I dodged and mowed, finally –finally! — finishing the task.
With the mechanical beasts back in their housing, I darted into the house, ran to the bathroom, started the shower, and just as I was searching for the clock to tell me the time, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror.
Oh.
Okay. So that’s why I received random attention from speeding vehicles.
Not complimentary.
And back to weird.
Because in the mirror was a dirty, wild-eyed female Disney villain wearing sleep pants, a questionably presentable t-shirt, and fuzzy dusty green-tinted houseslippers.
Huh.
And the hair. In art, it might be called something between Medusa and “Foliage Waving from the Ocean Floor.” Hair should not look like that. I was matted.
Needless to say, ego in check, I crawled into the shower, made myself presentable and walked out the front door with my newly coiffed head held high. Because, hey, I may be That Neighbor now, but my ditches look really good.
Plus I got to work five minutes early.
Plus plus…I finally got coffee.

Band Mom Training

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Our local high school prairie band, the Pride of Piedmont, traveled twenty arduous miles to participate in the State marching competition. After a morning of practice, they endured the prelims to pass gracefully into the finals last night.
As a Band Mom in the Works, I had to attend and take my budding percussionist Bubs with me, of course. I mean, it was a must: to sample the future, to taste the air, to sense the incoming.
And to buy probably the world’s worst popcorn — twice! — but that’s an aside.
Twelve bands from around the state earned their way into the finals, which began an hour early, as weather was forecast to ruin all evening plans. Things needed to move quickly in order to duck for cover before impending high winds and tornadic conditions disbanded — see what I did there? — us early. (It was a hot day; cold fronts and hot air don’t blend well, causing Disruption, Madness, Entropy, the Big Three.)
As an Okie, I was ready: I brought a raincoat. That was nearly Scout-like behavior for me, the ultimate non-forward thinker. I was ridiculously proud of bringing a coat, shunning it quickly beneath the bleachers without another thought. My inner storm-sense felt no whisper of anything but excitement and snare drum vibrations.
Our band didn’t play until 8pm, while clouds rolled in, iPhones everywhere tuned to weather radars, and breezes blew a tiny bit more forcefully than minutes before. Weather aside — because hey, weather and Okies are an ageless duo, married lo these many years (it does its thing, we ignore it) — tension was palpable. Even Bubs had abandoned his twelfth request to get up and leave and do whatever pre-teens deem fun aside from sitting still with their moms.
(Let me take a moment to feel my maternal gene quietly cry and shrivel.)
When finally the Pride marched afield, happy Piedmontian feet stomped repeatedly across aluminum bleachers, drowning out any thunder that dared approach. Our anxious crowd sounded like a herd of buffalo trampling grasses, leaving deep, deep footprints, and video-graphing every step, because buffalo do that, as they, too, care about posterity as much as any glowing Band Mom alive.
And the band did us proud. They were lovely in their blue and black with silver striping, recreating the Black Plague, the death, the mayhem. Our stricken teens ended up prostrate across the yard lines, valiantly playing the parts of corpses as Doctor Death beneath his crow mask wandered between castaway instruments and polyester clad bodies to fully appreciate his reign of doom.
It was epic.
And Bubs loved it, too.
So. Snapshot of the future, right there.
And the rain, though it dropped teaspoons of rain upon us during the tabulating and subsequent award ceremony, held back until much later. It knew our wrath should it fall prematurely.
And instruments are expensive, so thank you, buffalo of yore, for your input into holding back the storms until all the tubas were packed and the bells rolled away.
The future is bright.
(Though I’m not certain my poor raincoat, resentfully discarded hastily beneath my seat, made it back to the house…)