So where have I been for the last 10 days, and did I manage to accomplish any of my goals from two weeks ago? Let's see... Finish knitting a hat, check. Read three chapters of my book, check - but just barely: when I'm stressed I tend to read organizing books instead of educational ones. Walk the doggo woggos four times... no check there - I flaked out and only did three walks. I also only managed to get to the gym twice instead of the three times I'd planned on going. And, finally, try making one new recipe: check. It was a blackberry yogurt cheesecake kind of thing that sounded a lot better than it turned out, so I chucked the recipe.
And what did I manage to accomplish last week? Dog walks, gym sessions, bike rides, or new recipes? Nope, nope, nope and nope, the reason being that my parents had gone camping for the week and thus were not home to stop me from starting some massive project that I have no hope of finishing before they come back. This happens often, every time my parents leave for longer than three days, actually. Telling my sister my lastest plan - to completely redo the front yard in the time between Monday when my parents left and Friday when they returned home - prompted her to reply that she was surprised that they let me stay at the house unsupervised when they went away and that perhaps they should invest in a babysitter.
"Relax! I can handle it - just pull out the weeds, move a couple plants, retain the slope and rearrange the plants. It'll look awesome." Famous last words. But then again, all of the projects I've started have been MASSIVE projects that would easily take a whole crew of people a good week or two to finish, and invariably my parents return to some half finished construction and/or landscaping mess. And yet somehow I never seem to learn and always assume that this project will be different.
By Friday I had:
- managed to pull out five large plants, two of which I replanted in the backyard, one of which was a tree we were getting rid of anyway, and the last two - a rhodie and an azalea - which I was going to move but didn't manage to get around to, so they sat strewn about the yard, one next to the lilies, the other plopped into the ditch at the base of the yard.
- spent so much time pulling weeds that I began to dream about pulling weeds at night, and somehow managed to fill two huge yard debris bins as well as five large lawn/leaf bags with all the weeds I'd amassed from the front yard alone.
- spent multiple tedious - scratch that: extremely tedious - hours picking out hundreds of small river rocks from the dirt and transporting them to the backyard.
- been working since Monday from morning til night, whenever I wasn't walking dogs for work, running on fruit loops cereal and not enough sleep to try and finish the yard in time.
And did I get it done in time? Well, of course... not. The most that I can say for it is that it's weeded, for the most part, but - as any gardener knows - any lack of weeds is a temporary situation at best and they always seem to come back bigger and stronger the next time.
So now, you might be thinking, I must surely have learned my lesson and will never again start some big project (redoing the front yard, ripping out the carpet in the basement, painting the whole downstairs, etc) while my parents are gone on one of their longer camping trips during the summer. And hearing that question right now I would have to answer: definitely - I have no desire whatsoever to do anything more industrious than cleaning the kitchen. But, knowing me, if you ask me the same question next month I will probably already be picking out paint colors or researching flooring options.
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