We're trying not to look like white trash.

I've been doing some soul searching since the election. On the one hand, I'm really glad that we have overcome our national prejudice enough to elect an African-American to the office of president. I hope that it will spark dialogue and acceptance between the people of this nation and make us more unified. I am also glad I could vote.

On the other hand...oh, gosh.

I'm just too tired to go there.

It being Saturday yesterday, and a Saturday when Husband didn't have to be in 100 places at once no less, we got some stuff done around the house. The recent snow has melted and the day was absolutely lovely -- just the kind of day when you're really glad it's Fall. The air was crisp, but not too cold, and smelled full of all those complex autumn flavors: fallen leaves, wet earth, that indescribable "cool" scent that means summer is over.

The snow had, however, hid a multitude of sins in the front yard. To be honest, ours is the messiest front yard on the block. In our defense, we're the only house on the block with a multitude of young children, but that just exacerbates the difference between our "lived-in" look and the manicured, lawn-company-attended yards of our older neighbors.

Here is the front yard with our very tall flagpole on the left.

Our front yard is mostly cement. The previous owners (wisely, in my opinion, in a region that gets so little water) took out most of the lawn and added two more driveways, one that is a half-circle and one on the other side of the house from original driveway. This reduces the actual grass to a very small little patch, and that patch has a flower bed and tree in the middle of it. We got along with an electric mower for a very long time. In the front of the half-circle driveway, by the public sidewalk, there is a large planting bed with two huge pine trees.


Here you can see all the cut limbs of volunteer trees I pruned from amongst the pine trees but had nowhere to throw.

My goal yesterday was to sweep up the elephant's weight of pine needles that have fallen, clean out the gutters both by the street and up on the house, and sweep away the cobwebs by the front entry (I was cultivating them for Halloween as a sort of "green" decoration, but Halloween is over and now it's just creepy with no purpose.). I got most of that done, plus I found I had two compost piles I didn't even know about hiding under the shrubbery -- a black, rich mixture of rotted leaves and degraded lawn detritus. Bonus!

The downside to all that work was that I knew the moment I finished that it was just a small fraction of what needs to be done. *Sigh* The pine needles will come down again with the smallest wind, snow or drop in the DOW; the spiky, ornamental shrubs in one bed are still trying to take over the earth; and the ivy, though pretty, will continue to slowly and inexorably rip apart the wooden retaining wall around the pine trees. I didn't even get to the bikes. We also have this huge stainless steel sink hidden as much as possible around the west side of the house. We bought it from a school district auction, thinking we could put it down in the basement laundry room. It's a great sink. Really inexpensive. It's just a little too big to fit through the window into the basement. No chance of getting it around the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

Spiky, world dominating bushes running amok.

Wanna buy a sink?

Husband spent his day renting a steam carpet cleaning machine and cleaning the carpet in the exercise room we call "the spa" that is off the back of the house. Until very recently, we had homeless people living in it. That's a loooong story, and one I will not go into now (I heard your sigh of relief), but, suffice to say, the carpet had been pee-ed in multiple times. I cannot describe to you the stink of that room, what with the urine and the smell of unwashed bodies that lived out there. And just so you don't think we force people to live out there with no access to a bathroom in which to use the facilities and wash themselves, they were welcome to come in at any time to do so. Maybe I'll make another posting in which I explain that whole situation, but, for now, I'll leave it a bit of a mystery for those of you who don't already know the story. Husband kicked them out last week.

Anyhoo, back to the cleaning story. After Husband got that carpet cleaned and deodorized (oh, I hope it works! Fingers crossed!), he hauled the dining room chairs outside and gave them a good wash. I was surprised to remember that there are flowers on the fabric of the seats.

There is always so very much more to do than one mere human can accomplish in a day, but it was a start. Of course, while Husband and I were busy cleaning, we weren't encouraging (forcing) the children to do their work, so the inside of the house descended further into chaos. They're paying for that today. Even though it's Sunday, a day of rest, how can anyone rest in a house that looks like a permanent rummage sale? Their uncle is cracking the whip. As soon as I recover my energy from the after-church lunch scramble and helping the boys get changed out of their nice clothes, changing the littlest one's diaper and helping him take a nap, and refereeing various fights amongst the girls, I'll head back out into the trenches.

But not to the yard. Now the leaves have dropped. Maybe I'll call them mulch for the flower bed and go back inside.