"Turning the other cheek--or leaf--as the case may be."

For those of you still following along on this crazy train you will know that my last post centered on the rude comment my neighbor made about the leaf situation at our house.  As you can imagine, this has generated a lot of comments from my family and friends.  When I told Dave about it he remarked that it was a good thing his "two hour wind dance" had paid off.  My friend Stephanie had a brilliant idea to take shifts under the tree to catch each leaf--I seriously laughed out loud at that one.  I am not going to lie--her comment seriously stuck in my craw, so to speak.  I found myself thinking about it every time I looked at the leaves and it was riling me up! I kept thinking about what witty comment I could make in reply should she happen to judge me again and by the end of the week I had plenty of them on deck, I'll have you know.

The other thing her comment did was make me NOT want to go out there and rake--like my own silent protest of sorts but a couple of days ago I bit the bullet and spent several hours over the course of a couple of days cleaning up the mess.  Here's the outcome:

We managed to rake up 15 bags of leaves and the yard is full again--and the whole time I was raking I kept thinking about that dumb comment and getting more and more feisty.  (Doesn't this woman know that I have a to- do list a mile long and raking up leaves falls below "Candy Crush" on that list?  Does she just sit around in her house all day judging my yard and if so, I can't imagine what she has to say about the recurring mole situation.  And if she thinks that poorly of my yard, heaven help us if she looks in the window and catches a glimpse of the sock piles and mystery plunger that seem to persist.)

Which leads me to yesterday--I was on hour three (3!) of leaf detail and by this point I had strapped the leaf sucker -upper thing to me and was plugging away when I looked up and guess who was in my yard---right in front of me?  Yep--THE NEIGHBOR!!!  As you can imagine, I was furiously going through all of my snappy comebacks I'd stockpiled because this time, for crying out loud, I was going to be prepared!  But guess what?  The neighbor sheepishly pulled out two pints of raspberries and offered an apology!  She told me she had been having a bad day and what she said was out of line and it had been bothering her for the last week!  At this point I was back to being speechless other than to say, thanks and offer this brilliant remark:  "It's just a really big tree."  (I know, I know--eloquence is speaking is apparently not my forte.)

So after all my complaining and obsessing and seeking for retribution I learned a valuable lesson.  I learned that sometimes we are just having a bad day and we say stupid things.  And on the converse side I learned that we need to be careful of saying stupid things because there are people out there (like me apparently) who will put way too much stock into those stupid things.

My goal for this week is to try to be better about letting things go--at least the things that don't matter.  In the meantime, I'm off to suck up more leaves.  Again.

"Really???"

Fall is in the air and while the colors are beautiful the change in season presents one challenge here at the Morgans:

This tree is ENORMOUS!  And while it is beautiful this is what happens to our yard:

So for the next few weeks it will be an endless battle to try to stay on top of these falling leaves.  I think last year we managed to rake up over 50 giant bags!  

This is a picture I took several years ago after one of our near daily raking sessions--and of course I have a story to go with it.  Just thinking about it is riling me up...

It was a really rainy day and our yard was (again) filled with leaves.  You can go out and spend two hours raking, go in the house to warm up and come back 20 minutes later to a yard full of more leaves. It's sort of maddening.  So that rainy Saturday morning I got all 6 kids up and we set out to rake the yard.  (This is a mothering feat in and of itself).  I was feeling pretty proud of the fact that all six kids were out there being pretty industrious and not complaining (too much) when our old lady neighbor pulled up in front of our house.  "How nice," I thought.  "She's coming to commend the kids on what hard workers they are being."  Uhhh..not so much.

Cranky neighbor rolls down her window, leans out with a look of disdain and says to me (I am not making this up), "I'm glad to see you finally raking your leaves up--they blow into my yard."

Seriously????  THAT'S what you're going to say to the mother of six who has like a thousand things to do on any given day and who is out nearly every day raking up piles and piles of leaves?  And you're going to say that in front of my children?  Needless to say this did not go over well with me but of course I was too stunned to think of a snappy comeback.  (I know, I know--my instinct should be to turn the other cheek, but dang it crazy lady, you try keeping up with a zillion leaves from a 50 foot tree!) Luckily, I have those boys with the Morgan wit gene so after we finished cleaning up I came back inside as one of them stayed out to "finish something up."  What was it, you ask?  Well, his own witty response to that mean old lady:  a sign staked in our yard that read"

"LEAF ME ALONE."

Hilarious right?  Man, sometimes I love these kids...And it seems like it might be time to resurrect that sign because today was windy and I came home to a yard full of leaves and guess who stopped by?  Yep--cranky neighbor pulled up to the house as McKay and Davis were leaving to rehearsal and instructed them to "clean up your yard--those leaves are blowing down to mine."  And McKay's response:

  "Yep--I'll get right on controlling nature for you lady."

So here's the dilemma--I was going to go out and rake but right now that is about the last thing I want to do.  What I want to do is take out my leaf blower and blow them straight down into her yard but of course, I need to be the bigger person.  So I'll rake...after a long windy nap...

I'm living in THIS?

We just got done with a fabulous visit from Dave's parents and brother this past weekend.  I tell everyone I meet that I have the world's best in-laws--it's the truth.  But what is it about having company that makes you look around your house and ask, "I've been living in THIS?"  I mean, I guess you just get used to living in your own mess and it doesn't seem that bad until you look at it through someone else's eyes.  Now don't get me wrong--my in laws are very nonjudgmental (or if they are they do a pretty good job of keeping it on the down low) so they aren't making me feel bad--I've got that covered myself.

Why is it that some people just seem to be able to always keep a clean house?  There's got to be some secret--because I see these houses on Pinterest.  And they are clean.  The problem is I have complete cleaning A.D.D.

Here's a recent example:

The other morning at about 7:30 am I decided that I would take the garbage cans and yard debris out to the curb for Dave.  He usually does it but he was under the weather so I thought I would help out.  Since we have already established that I am NOT a morning person I was still wearing my pajamas and my hair looked like I had just slept on it.  Oh wait...I had.  To further add to the ensemble the only shoes I had sitting by the front door were my black ballet flats, of course.  You already know how lazy I am so I slipped the flats on and set out to get the cans.  As I was putting the yard debris out I realized that it had been really windy and there were branches all over the yard so I figured I might as well throw those in there while I was at it.  Then I thought as long as I was doing that I might as well rake the leaves and pull some weeds (remember--the in laws were coming).  This is all happening while I am in my pajama/ballet flat/crazy hair ensemble which wouldn't have been a problem because my cul de sac is pretty deserted.  Except right then the yard maintenance guys for the neighbor showed up.  Well, I looked just fabulous and they must have felt sorry for me because they started cleaning up my leaves for me.  Well I figured I had some extra time now so I went back into the garage where I then saw my drill with the screw bit in it.  That reminded me that for the last 8 years--yes, 8 years-- I had wanted to repaint my house numbers.  So that explains why at 8:00 am I was standing on a 5 gallon bucket unscrewing house numbers and looking homeless while the neighbor paid for her guys to finish my yard work...

That is my typical MO for house cleaning.  I'll start out with one simple task and then get sidetracked by 4 others and usually the first task never gets completed!  I'll make lists and then forget to look at the list.  I'll write a reminder on my hand and then won't be able to remember what the reminder is for.  I've got problems people!  It's no wonder I keep losing all those kids at Disneyland...

Anyway--my goal for tomorrow is to see a project thru from beginning to end without getting sidetracked.  It's a lofty aspiration but with a little bit of luck and whole lot less of Pinterest it might just be attainable.