Day 265 - Labor Day

In honor of Labor Day, I spent most of the day laboring to make the yard, the house and even the cars look a little nicer. I used to get a certain degree of satisfaction from doing these sort of cleaning and straightening tasks, but now most of them seem like a lost cause. I'm never going to get the yard looking great. I've put in new Bermuda grass four times already and within a single season the Johnson Grass and Chickweed seeds blow in from the park and establish themselves all over again. The only way to get rid of the weeds is either to spend an enormous amount of time working in the yard, or to use strong chemicals to kill them. I won't use chemicals because of the dogs and I don't have all that much time to spare, so I end up just mowing the weeds.

I finally repaired the broken door to the greenhouse even though it involved yet another trip to Home Depot to buy the fasteners I needed. I've bought these fasteners three times already, but I always lose them before I get around to making the repairs. This time, I repaired the door immediately after I got home from Home Depot, so the parts wouldn't have time to disappear again. Fixing the greenhouse is another lost cause. Every time I try to grow something, critters from the park will get inside and eat the plants. What the rats don't eat, the squirrels will. I don't know how the animals manage to get inside the building, but they always find a way.

I also got some Meguiar's Fine Cut Cleaner and polished out all the little dings and paint scrapes on our cars. This is just about as futile as trying to get rid of weeds in the yard. The cars look great now, but the next time either of us goes to the mall, someone is sure to roll a shopping cart into the car or scrape something with their door in a tight parking spot. It's just part of living in a city. Look at the cars all around you the next time you go grocery shopping. Every single one of them is full of little dings.

When the cars were clean and polished, we drove up to K-9 University to walk the Dalmatian Rescue dogs again. The kennel is closed on holidays, so if we don't go up there, the dogs just sit in their cages all day. Not surprisingly, the Dalmatians were glad to see us. "Wild" might be a better word to describe them. We gave them each a nice long walk and headed home again.

On the way back, Janet needed to pick something up at one of those humongous mega Wall Mart stores. I hate to even go inside those stores. They're always crowded, and when you're ready to check out, there's inevitably someone ahead of you in line who is trying to pay for their stuff with an expired credit card. Today it was someone who dumped an entire purse full of coupons on the counter and expected the cashier to give her credit for every single one of them. It took forever. I'd much rather pay a little more somewhere else in exchange for keeping my sanity.

Even though nothing much happened, the three day holiday zipped by way too fast. Tomorrow, it's back to solving website problems and paying bills again. I have a feeling that work is just as much of a lost cause as keeping weeds out of the yard.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day