En Garde!

It's fencing time, people!

You may be tired of hearing about my ugly yard, but I am not through yet. Yes, I have only had a house for a couple of months, and you may think I am turning into one of those scary lawn-crazed people, but I swear to Jack Lemmon I'm not. Believe me, I know what a lawn-crazed person looks like. They are people who have pristine lawns, who cut and shape and prune everything to sparkling, trim edges. My neighbor, on the left side of me, is such a person. She's retired, and all she does all day long is sweep her front steps and walkway (at least twice a day), and work on her yard, which looks impossibly lovely. No fallen leaves on the ground, no blades of grass out of place, no flowers unbloomed. She tries to be nice to me, but the state of my yard is just too slovenly for her to completely wipe the disdain off of her face. As I slave away, trying to clean all the crap up, she comes over to say ever-so-helpful things like "you sure do have a lot of cleaning to do, DON'T you." Yes lady. I do. Thank you so much for pointing that out, and wrinkling up your nose at me while making such a pithy observation. I KNOW it's disgusting. I'm the one knee-deep in overgrown shrubbery, wrangling this god damn fern within an inch of its life. I'm the one looking at your yard next door in deep green envy. Some day I will have flowers. And green grass. And fluffy, healthy plants. Just not today, ok? Because I can't work that fast. I'm not the Jolly Green Giant. I have other things to do with my day other than tend to my yard. (I'm not really sure about that Jolly Green Giant reference. Did the Jolly Green Giant have anything to do with plants? Did he grow peas or something? Why was he green again? Didn't he have a toga made of leaves or some shit like that? The librarian in me should look this up, but I'm off duty. So just go with me.)

On the right side of my house, however, is the exact opposite of the Super-Clean-Yard Maven. The right side is trrrrashed. It's a rental house, filled up with college kids (ha ha, look at me calling college students "kids." Ok, grandma!). They are lovely people, who came over the first day and introduced themselves, gave me their phone number, and told me not to hesitate to call them if they ever got too loud. And they never have gotten too loud, which makes me really happy because I don't ever, ever want to turn into that "you rotten kids!" lady. I have a soft spot in my heart for them. They are all gothed out, bless their Robert Smith souls. Why do I start to feel all big sisterly when I see white powder and black eyeliner? I don't know. It just makes me want to bake them all muffins or something. Go ahead and psychoanalyze. I mean, when I first fired up my laptop when I moved in, my wireless connection bled into theirs, and a little message box popped up on my screen asking me if I wanted to join the wireless connection called "Necropolis of Angels." How friggin' cute is THAT? It's better than kittens.

So although I love these kiddies, I don't love looking out my windows into their yard. For all my yard's ugliness, theirs is Quasimodo hideous. They have a big, overstuffed, moldy couch in the backyard, with oodles of beer cans strewn about. The house itself is painted a barn red, and the picture window that faces my house showcases a large skull-and-crossbones flag. Not only that, but on one occasion, I looked out the window from my afternoon tea, and I saw...um...naked nudity. Nude nakedity. One of the kiddies didn't care to be-clothe themselves and walked around doing chores. Sweeping. Wiping off windowsills. Hi. Young one, you're nekkid. Stop that.

So, Nordic Boy built me a fence. He ordered lumber, started work on Friday, and worked on it over the weekend. Now, I am in love with my brand new fence. Look at how pretty.




Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl