Month: August 2009

Ben: What did the fisrt person who landed on the moon say?
Cassidy: OH MY GOSH!
Me: *laugh*

Remember all those rocks I mentioned before? The ones we removed, one at a time, from the GIGANTIC pond in the back yard? Well, we’ve been meaning to put them up on Craigslist for quite some time and Ben finally got them up today. Now, we are GIVING these rocks away.

FOR FREE.

We could probably make a few hundred dollars on them but we JUST. WANT. THEM. GONE. and posting them for free Ben had quite a few hits in a very short amount of time. The first response was from a nice couple that is in the process of building a pond for themselves and are going to be here tomorrow morning to haul them all away.

BUT! The great thing about Craigslist is that there are always THOSE people out there. You know, THEM. And Ben got one. The following exchange is the reason that I was never in a great rush to list them myself and also why I’m so glad Ben took on the task:

Crazy ass Rock Guy (AKA: Steve):

Hi,

Yes, I am very interested to take most of all of your rock this Sunday. Sat might be possilbe after 3 but I have to wait for another confirmation. However, Sunday is best for me. Please let me know if it is ok.

Thanks,
Steve
[Phone number redacted to protect the innocent stupid]

Ben:

Rocks are tenatively spoken for, but will update once they’re taken (hopefully tomorrow).

Crazy ass Rock Guy:

No idea what you mean by saying rocks are tenatively spoken for. So you still have them available or not?

Ben:

Tentatively spoken for means that someone has contacted me and is making plans to come get them, but they have not picked them up yet.

Thanks,
Ben

Crazy ass Rock Guy:

You must be an University teacher or belonging to the Poetry Club. In a daliy life and common usage, we don’t use your language. It can only cause more confusion.

Thanks,
Steve

Ben:

I’m sorry for taking the time to give you an update. Please disregard all of my previous emails and the advertisement I took the time to write, and generosity for giving away free landscaping rocks (just…wow…). I don’t know who ‘we’ is, but I don’t belong to that group.

Let me put it in language that better suits you (sigh).

You will never get them.

Enjoy your weekend,
-a generous asshole.

And because Steve is one of those persistant kind of whack jobs he didn’t give up and Ben got these about an hour ago:

Fucken smart ass…rocks don’t speak man so wtf u mean by saying rocks are tentatively spoken for…….U don’t even know what the fuck u are talking about u idiot.. tentatively AHOLE ….make more sense

Then 8 minutes later:

fucken retarded W trash– Obama is a president now u ahole…..

WOW?! Obama is president?! I had no clue! I really didn’t! I’m so glad that I had this educated voting member of society to inform me!

Cassidy started 6th grade today. SIXTH. GRADE. I started taking a picture of her on the 1st day of school a few years ago but last year I think was the first year I got one up onto flickr. I can’t believe how much change has happened in that one year.

It’s so amazing to see her growing into this little woman. Forming her own opinions. Making friends and telling them secrets I’ll never know. I’m starting to realize for the first time that I’m less “driver” now and more “passenger”. It’s awesome and scary at the same time and I just feel so lucky that I get to be a part of the ride.

Dude.

We have a badass backyard.

When we first moved into the house we had a pond in the back. I was so looking forward to getting it all fixed up and running and the sound of the water and the frogs and possibly fish and… no. It was just one disaster after another. First the pump died so we had somebody come out to install a new one. (Actually, something good came out of that step! We bought the shopvac which we’ve since found a ton of uses for.) Then once it was all up and running and pretty and stuff it started leaking. And just GAH! We tried to track the leak, thought maybe it was just a hole in the lining, so one Saturday afternoon we started digging to find the hole and pretty soon the hole was four feet deep and five feet wide and IS THERE AN END TO THIS DAMN HOLE! And it’s not just the digging! There’s the ROCKS! There are SO. MANY. ROCKS.

Then it sat. For probably a month it sat.

We tossed around the idea of trying to fix it or just fill it up and sod over it or just throw a couple gallons of nitroglycerin in there and hope for a very strong wind to blow through and in the end sod seemed like the most logical, cost effective and dog friendly solution.

Ben spent a LOT of time over the next two or so weeks filling up the hole with trucks full of dirt, ripping out monster grass plants that were determined to stay, prepping the rock hard clay around the pond area and cussing. And buying tools. And sweating. He was dirty and sweaty and cussing and I have to admit here that a small part of me kind of liked coming home to that. heh ENOUGH OF THAT! Get your minds out of the gutter, people!

Finally, last week he was able to switch to topsoil and finished up prepping the area so that Saturday we could lay down the sod. And we did. We laid that sod GOOD. We kicked that sod’s ASS.

And I spent the next two days laying on my back and alternating between cooling pads, the massager and heavy doses of pain killers because, dude, that sod KICKED MY ASS. Did you know that a little roll of sod weighs over 50 pounds and we moved 15 of them from the pallet to the back of the truck, then the back of the truck to a spot in the backyard, then a spot in the backyard to where they were finally laid to rest for ALL OF ETERNITY. And they really have to guesstimate the weight because the wetter they are, the more they weigh and we had a few that were REALLY wet. So with the guestimate weight and the number of times we had to move it we lifted a combined total of 2250 POUNDS OF GRASS. And if that sentence were, like, you know, about “grass” *wink wink nudge nudge* I’d probably feel all happy right now but it wasn’t, it was, you know… GRASS. So after going to pick up the 2000th pound of grass I must have lifted wrong. Or maybe it was swinging the mallet into the four inch thick tree posts, all eight of them, so that I could pull them out of the ground. Or maybe it was the way I threw myself into the chair when I took a break but whatever it was, my ass: KICKED.

I’m okay now though because WE HAVE A BADASS BACKYARD.

Ben had to go yesterday and get one final roll of sod to fill in some of the edge spots and he’s been dilligently watching over it and watering it three times a day and it looks AWESOME. He’s also pulled out some more of the crappy looking plants and “installed” a new plant where the old waterfall used to be. He did a great job of building that place back up with rock and planted some ground cover there with PINK FLOWERS that will eventually “flow over” that rock and look beautiful.

When we first moved in I was SO in love with the backyard. I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly get any better but, MAN, has it gotten better. And I love it. And it’s only going to get better. And Ben has been the driving force. And have I written lately about how much I love that man?