I had some landscaping done this week. The house I bought was, believe it or not, a foreclosed HUD house, but it was in the best shape EVER for a foreclosed HUD property. Minimal repairs to do, the inspection was awesome and it was apparently sitting vacant for two years waiting for me (and no one else) to tell The Ex that I just couldn't do it any longer. The house was in awesome shape, but the yard looked like it was straight out of a trailer park down on Jeff Davis. Yeah, that bad. Well, you gotta take the good with the bad. I'm not a pretentious enough bitch to turn a perfectly good house down because the yard looks like a dog's asshole.
However, I've learned that I will really work in the future to never buy a house in the spring again. Simply put, you have to start the yard upkeep right fucking away. I don't know these neighbors and I don't know how long they'll let me go on the grass before someone calls the county, and then county comes out and leaves you a nasty little message about a fine, cut your grass pronto, blah blah blah. So I have to jump into the yard work waters immediately. Not an issue, because although The Ex did all the yard work when we were married, I'm pretty sure I've done more hard outdoor labor between the ages of 10 and 18 than he ever did in his whole fucking life, including his stint in the Marines. Plus, I had negotiated for half of the yard tools in the separation agreement, so I was feeling pretty good as I bet most women don't do that, and then realize later they got screwed one last time because yard tools are expensive. Even the cheap shit is expensive.
This yard, though, needed more than even my country ass could do alone. I actually think I could have done more, if I had a pickup, but I don't and I haven't been in the mood to go searching out an old piece of shit from someone for few hundred or so, because that was going to be more of a pain in my ass than it would have been worth. My mom offered to have some landscaping done, and who I am to argue? This is my birthday and Christmas present, and hell, I'll take that. A full crew showed up this week and completely stripped down all of the flower beds of the weeds and despised pea-gravel, made beds where there were none, sprayed the weeds (meaning every green thing in the yard), brought in about two tons of mulch, ten cubic yards of topsoil, plugged, seeded and covered with hay. Poof, insta-pretty yard. They took out a couple of trees, but they were fairly small trees. I have lots more in the backyard I want gone, basically because they all drop something or the other besides the leaves. Walnuts, hickory nuts, acorns, squirrels, something is falling out of every one of those trees. But I didn't want to be too greedy with what I was getting, and besides, I've decided that I can go buy a chainsaw and take out most of the trees myself. I figure the best way to decide if I'm able to take the tree out myself is if the trunk is smaller around than my upper thigh. If the trunk is bigger around than my thigh, then that's not a tree I want to tackle. I've visually measured all of them, including both of my upper thighs, and I've got about 15 trees to take out, whenever I get around to buying a chainsaw.
In another life, I've cut wood and I've split wood and I've hauled wood. No big deal, and as long as I don't break one of my acrylic nails, I can knock this out. But uh oh, here's the truck issue again. What the hell am I going to do with all of this wood? I'll add this: what the hell am I going to do with all of this green wood? I don't want to stack it up to season it, because any dumbass knows you can't burn green wood. I don't want to stack it up and season it because woodpiles inevitably draw snakes, which I want none of, and because even after the wood is seasoned, I don't have a fireplace in my fabulous new-to-me house. Maybe I can put it on craigslist, because there probably is someone who would come and pick up a load of green wood simply because it's free and they could just stack it and season it themselves.
I'm okay with not having a fireplace, since I didn't use the one in the house The Ex and I had. Gas fireplaces scare me, even though you don't have to ever get your chimney cleaned (bonus!), and wood fireplaces mean I've got to do something to put some wood in there and I've got to get the chimney cleaned. I'm a little sad about not having a fireplace because really, they are good for getting shagged in front of every once in a while, a la Day of Our Lives or some other cheesy soap opera. But at the same time, I have some real concerns about that, which brings me to the point of this entire post, which is rugburn. In theory, screwing in front of a fireplace is fun and romantic and all, but I'm even more scared of rugburn than I am of gas and wood fireplaces.
Now, I've had rugburn and what I am getting ready to describe could very possibly be the Mother of All Rugburns. It was so bad one time I ended up going to the doctor for it. And I'm not one of those people who goes running off the doctor for every little thing, as it's generally not worth the co-pay. But about a third of the skin on my back between my shoulder blades and my lower back was missing and I needed some numbing ointment or something. I was still living in Farmville, so I go to my regular doctor, whom I hated because he was creepy weird and always wanted me to get undressed for a sore throat. I found out later that his hospital privileges had been suspended about ten years prior. Anyway, this rugburn was so bad that I didn't even hesitate to fling my shirt off. He stood behind me, and before shock and awe was a common saying, said with some shock and a little awe, "My God. What happened to you?" And I said, somewhat sheepishly and a little snappish, "It's rugburn. Can you give me some kind of numbing ointment or something because it really, really hurts." Silence. Dead silence. Just the sound of him scribbling off a prescription and handing me my shirt back. Okay, I'm good. I've got some cream for it. Just make this shit stop hurting and make my skin grow back extra quick, for the love of God. I go rushing to the pharmacy, get the prescription filled and go rushing home. Holy fuck, my monkey-like arms can't reach back there to smear a cream around and really numb it up. Taping cotton balls to a ruler didn't work either. Fuck! So I go rushing off to a girlfriend's house to wake her ass up and get this freaking cream on my back. I'll never forget it, a beautiful spring morning in Farmville, dogwoods and azaleas blooming, birds chirping, and I'm running around like a fucking chicken with my head cut off trying to take care of this rugburn. Get to my girlfriend's house and wake her up, because my rugburn is way more important than her sleeping is. She looked at my back and said, "What happened?" I said, for the second time that morning, "It's rugburn, goddammit. Oh my god, please just put the cream on kind of thick. Do you have any bandages?" She was like, "Hooooooooly shit." And she hooked me up in between the giggles and few outright peals of laughter. That's what girlfriends do. Especially when they've been friends since fourth grade and would futurely screen shot pics on facebook of The Ex taking shots at a bar.
So me not having a fireplace in my new house is pretty much of a good thing. No fireplace means no rugburn. I still don't know what I'll do with the wood after I cut down all of these thigh-sized trees, though. And the guy that gave me the rugburn? I still talk to him every now and then, because every man wants to know that he was THE one who gave you a case of rugburn so bad you went to the doctor for it.
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