I think The Old is happening

When Bubba and I were out standing in our field (as always - ha!) pontificating about where my new veg bed would go and where The Fruit Tree of Bubba's Dreams would go, we were having a really hard time picturing any of it because of all these damn weeds.

When the convo turned to "lets just fucking nuke them and be done with it" I wasn't thrilled, per say, but I wasn't really putting up a good argument to the contrary. What am I going to do anyway, pull them all myself? By hand? I mean come on, let's not be a hero.

But as time wore on and the weeds got taller still and I spent more time sitting out in the empty veg beds with my morning brew staring my deadly laserbeam evil stare at the weeds, I couldn't get *right* with the idea of spraying chemicals all over the place and especially not right near my veg garden with its organic this and companion planting that and and also not where we're going to plant a fruit tree that will hopefully grow fruit that we will eat.

I mean, I'm not perfect and I'm not even, like, mostly acceptable most of the time, but the contradiction of brewing an organic garden with all of my heart and soul over here and then nuking the ever loving crap out of the weeds right next to it over there was becoming impossible for me to justify.

What kind of a two faced loser was I anyway? And, plus, what if in the Rounding Up some of the chemical cooties got into the garden soil? What then I ask you?!

Horror and tragedy, that's what.

So, last Saturday, while Bubba was off being a very good friend and moving house for his BFF, I summoned all my naive courage and also my mud shoes and best gardening gloves ever and walked out to the back .40.

"Fuck you weeds. Your asses are mine."

Oh yes, I really said it. Out loud at 8:30am. Probably loud enough for my neighbors to hear. And then I pulled weeds for, like, four+ hours.

For a while I was pulling and filling up the yard waste bin and dragging it to the street and dumping it out and doing it over again and thinking, "Huh, this isn't SO bad. What was *my* problem?"

And then after doing that three times I remember thinking, "Huh, this is taking much longer than I expected and how big is this street pile going to get and also my back is kind of hurting."

And then after the fourth trip and finishing up the back area and moving on to the front of the yard and also mowing I thought, "Yeah, so I'll probably be a *little* sore tomorrow, but it's still worth it!"

Oh what a mighty underestimater I am.


It would appear that The Old I've heard so much about (thank you Bubba for these kind and constant reminders) may be finally starting to manifest itself in certain areas of my body. Like, for example, my hamstrings. My hamstrings that feel like they're stretched over a drum. A really big drum that's on fire and also totally immune to the numbing effects of, say, extra large doses of Advil, gin, heating pads, more gin, some PainAid from the first aid kit at work and "therapeutic easy jogs".

It is now Wednesday, a cool five days after The Pulling of a Billion Weeds (four days if you're being generous since I finished in the afternoony hours) and I'm still mostly incapacitated. The dog's walks have been stilted and lackluster. Our chase sessions in the park have been more like "You run around and I'll make growly noises at you from the bench, OK?" sessions. My coworkers think I'm either secretly 90 years old or Frankenstein since I groan when I sit down and walk without bending at the knee. This morning when I went on a mad closet hunt for my favorite flip flops (Yay! Sunny!) I had to ask for help getting up.

I'm only *a little* worried.

But as long as I can hobble my sad self out to the veg beds this weekend and plant the seeds for the Yet Still Organic garden, I'm OK with it.

Take that! Stupid asshole weeds.