Fold My Laundry Please

I stood in my kitchen this morning, staring glumly at our neglected back yard through the sliding glass door.  The weeds, the grass, the unswept porch, THE WEEEEEEDS!  It was a thoroughly depressing sight.  But my toe has been feeling better (thank you for asking), at least good enough for me to make a few quick passes over the lawn with our push mower.  And perhaps I could bring myself to yank a weed or two while I was out there.  But it would be SO MUCH WORK and I was STILL ROCKIN’ THE INJURED LIST and WAAH WAAH WAAH WAAAAAAAH!  So I sat down at the computer instead.

And revelation came in the form of a comment on my last post.  Teresa sympathized with my pain and my lack of desire to do yard work.  Then she said something that really struck home.

"Just wait…in a few years, having all those kids will really pay off. They will mow, trim, weed and rake for room and board (and a bit of allowance). It’s awesome!"

And that’s when it hit me.  Hey, I have kids.  I HAVE KIDS!!  And they have hands!  HANDS!  And arthritis-free backs, hips, and knees!  YAY!  And so one of my errands while Ethan was at school today was a trip to Walmart to purchase teeny tiny garden gloves and some of those cheapy, generic, Crocs rip-offs.

When school let out, I revealed my plan and showed the children their "prizes".  

And much cheering was heard in the land!  We returned home and gleefully outfitted ourselves for toiling in the back yard.  TOILING!  GLEEFULLY!  Once equipped, I informed the children that we were all going to be pulling weeds.  All of us.  And more cheering was heard in the land!  HUZZAH!

At first, everyone enthusiastically began ripping weeds from the ground and proudly showing off how long the roots on their weeds were.  Five minutes later, the reality of the situation began to sink in.  You know what?  This "fun" strongly resembles WORK.  I know.  Strange how that is.

So began the nagging.

And the threats.

A reassignment of duties was in order.

Ethan started off requiring much nagging.  There was a whole lot of "Put your shoes back on," here and "You can’t stare the weeds out of the ground," there, but finally he noticed that the yard looked much nicer behind us and that the work area was shrinking.  So he retained his full-time position of Weed Puller Guy. 

Gideon alternated back and forth between pulling weeds, and sitting in a lawn chair complaining about his back.  I think I may have been mistaken about his age.  I thought he was four, but apparently he’s 90 YEARS OLD.  So while Ethan had required merely a small sprinkling of threats to motivate him onward, Gideon needed more of a generous dollop.  (I love that word.  Dollop.)  So he was demoted to a part-time weed pulling position.  However his duties were expanded to include, but were not limited to, listening for and LOUDLY ANNOUNCING the arrival of the ice-cream man (our neighborhood has three or four of them come by each evening), dancing wildly to the ice cream truck’s music until it had faded away, pulling the legs off of and then stomping on bugs, and ruminating out loud (emphasis on the loud) about why it might be that girls do not have penises.

Aurora, being only two years old, was allowed to spend most of her time simply running around on the freshly mown lawn, singing songs in her highest pitch, and trying to pull the plants that are supposed to be there out of the ground.

Much fun was had by all.  Or at least the yard is looking better now.  And it only took 3 hours!  My, how time does fly!

And so it appears that children are good for more than just an excuse to go to Mc Donald’s.  Who knew?

I could do with a back rub now.  I hear Humor-Blogs.com has the hands of an angel!