From: shellyr@bridge.net Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 19:25:33 +0000 Subject: ROBERTS' RULES:CHORES From: Self To: ME Subject: ROBERTS' BCC to: @LIST3381.PML Date sent: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 19:06:27 EDITORS AND READERS: This column may not appear anywhere without the copyright notice, and identification lines at the bottom. It may be non-commercially reprinted without change and only in its entirety without prior permission. Commercial reprint requires written permissiona and involves a fee. To make commercial reprint arrangements, please email shellyr@bridge.net. The last lines of the column, containing author and copyright information, must appear with any reprint. #################################################### ROBERTS' RULES by Shelly Roberts OH NOT MUCH, JUST A COUPLE OF CHORES. Jude and I played in the mud this weekend. We pulled out the centerstrip between our two driveways. That is, we pulled out all the messy orange flowers that we planted first before jude got into her purpleand pink flower theme everywhere else in the yard. Now as you know, roberts 58th rule of the universe, right after "no good deed shall go unpunished." is: There is no such thing as an easy little job. There were, when we got here six years ago, four ten foot long 4x4's lining this center strip. Once they may have been set into the earth, but the huge bischoffia tree roots -or destiny -moved them onto the drive way... as kind of heavy floating car- targets. Yearly they turned green and needed washing with a pressure cleaner. Yearly I vowed to replace them with something else. Three hundred years ago at some price barn, we bought a bag of wildflower carpet, and vaguely thought they might look interesting in the center strip. So this was the morning to pull the orange thingees, scatter the pink stuff in the bag, water it in, and wait for our caribbean festival. First, the orange thingees had nested. A not-so-neat matrix of roots and shoots that required a pitchfork. Then there is this root, see. Can't use the chain saw, cuz the root is buried in dirt which isn't, I don't think, all that swell on the chain saw. Well, the keyhole saw only cost 75 cents at a yard sale, so what's the sacrifice? Then with a sledge hammer and a cold chisel and only one hour and twenty two minutes later, the root crowding the edge so the brick thingee won't go in, is out. So it's off to home depot...or as I call it, home despot, since I never ever get out of the place for under a hundred dollars. (there is an unwritten rule that it is okay to go to home depot in things that homeless people wouldn't be buried in, as long as you are in mid-project, and wear either a back brace or a leather carpenter's pouch. These things make you invisible to real people, and afford sympathetic acknowledgement from others so attired) So off I go for two foot long, white, thin, brick thingees ( a technical term) to replace the mossy beams. And hey, why not some scalloped heavier two foot long brickee thingees for the area owned by the aperagus ferns at the perpendicular end of the drive... and might as well pick up half a dozen varigated liarope grass pots to put along the fence to replace the out of control asperagus eyesores. Then, of course, it starts to rain. Lightly. So it feels good on this overheated overworking body. Oh-oh. We're two white brick thingees shy. Back to home depot in the rain while jude does some more root canal on the aperagus furns, which put the cia and several women's groups I know to shame when it comes to underground networking. We ain't anywhere near scattering spring wildflower seeds yet. We go on like this till saturday is just a ben-gay memory. The rain is light but the ground is mildly muddy. I am (whatever the opposite of mildly is) muddy. Jude's garden "tan" is approaching qualifying her for affirmative action positions if there were any left. So sunday. More of the same. And a trip to home depot to buy the undercalculated brick scalopee thingees, to buy a boy's toy to take out the next set of interfering roots from the bischoffia tree (to whom I apologized profusely while continuing to cut). $18 for a razor toothed prunning saw that did the job in 3.67 minutes and didn't mind getting muddy. Finally all the white brick trim was in and looking very neat. We left one two foot fan palm in the middle of the strip, surrounded it with broken popcorn brick pieces to simulate a circle, I set some stepping stones in the two and a half foot wide strip just behind where the caddy's front door would be if we always hit the car-parking mark, and ripped open the bag of wildflower promises that got us into this "quick little job" in the first place. The stuff is embedded in pinky-mauve paper batting and chopped up old Marlboro packs. We spread it festively the entire length of the strip, except where the fan palm and step stones were, watered it in heavily, and felt the first serious raindrops. We were able to get most of the garden tools and dissolvables inside before the deluge, and prayed our handiwork wasn't washing away. Then a hosing down, and 15 minutes each in the massage thingee I bought jude for xmas with personal ulterior motives, whipped up a melenge (that's martha stewart for casserole) of pork, old broccoli, two leftover kinds of couscous, sun-dried tomatoes and anything else I could find to add to this mulegatawnny. I nearly had enough strength to pick up the tom clancy I finally gave myself permission to read. It is 804 pages in 6 point type and weighs about as much as one of those white brick driveway liners. Other than that, not much this weekend. And you? Oh, yeah, we'll let you know when we get wildflowers. And you wondered what lesbians DO? ________________________ (C) 1997. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. May be commercially reprinted only in its entirety with written permission. Shelly Roberts is an internationally syndicated columnist, and the author of the #1 best-selling Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living. (Spinsters Ink.) From: Self To: ME Subject: ROBERTS' BCC to: @LIST3381.PML Date sent: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 19:06:27 EDITORS AND READERS: This column may not appear anywhere without the copyright notice, and identification lines at the bottom. It may be non-commercially reprinted without change and only in its entirety without prior permission. Commercial reprint requires written permissiona and involves a fee. To make commercial reprint arrangements, please email shellyr@bridge.net. The last lines of the column, containing author and copyright information, must appear with any reprint. #################################################### ROBERTS' RULES by Shelly Roberts OH NOT MUCH, JUST A COUPLE OF CHORES. Jude and I played in the mud this weekend. We pulled out the centerstrip between our two driveways. That is, we pulled out all the messy orange flowers that we planted first before jude got into her purpleand pink flower theme everywhere else in the yard. Now as you know, roberts 58th rule of the universe, right after "no good deed shall go unpunished." is: There is no such thing as an easy little job. There were, when we got here six years ago, four ten foot long 4x4's lining this center strip. Once they may have been set into the earth, but the huge bischoffia tree roots -or destiny -moved them onto the drive way... as kind of heavy floating car- targets. Yearly they turned green and needed washing with a pressure cleaner. Yearly I vowed to replace them with something else. Three hundred years ago at some price barn, we bought a bag of wildflower carpet, and vaguely thought they might look interesting in the center strip. So this was the morning to pull the orange thingees, scatter the pink stuff in the bag, water it in, and wait for our caribbean festival. First, the orange thingees had nested. A not-so-neat matrix of roots and shoots that required a pitchfork. Then there is this root, see. Can't use the chain saw, cuz the root is buried in dirt which isn't, I don't think, all that swell on the chain saw. Well, the keyhole saw only cost 75 cents at a yard sale, so what's the sacrifice? Then with a sledge hammer and a cold chisel and only one hour and twenty two minutes later, the root crowding the edge so the brick thingee won't go in, is out. So it's off to home depot...or as I call it, home despot, since I never ever get out of the place for under a hundred dollars. (there is an unwritten rule that it is okay to go to home depot in things that homeless people wouldn't be buried in, as long as you are in mid-project, and wear either a back brace or a leather carpenter's pouch. These things make you invisible to real people, and afford sympathetic acknowledgement from others so attired) So off I go for two foot long, white, thin, brick thingees ( a technical term) to replace the mossy beams. And hey, why not some scalloped heavier two foot long brickee thingees for the area owned by the aperagus ferns at the perpendicular end of the drive... and might as well pick up half a dozen varigated liarope grass pots to put along the fence to replace the out of control asperagus eyesores. Then, of course, it starts to rain. Lightly. So it feels good on this overheated overworking body. Oh-oh. We're two white brick thingees shy. Back to home depot in the rain while jude does some more root canal on the aperagus furns, which put the cia and several women's groups I know to shame when it comes to underground networking. We ain't anywhere near scattering spring wildflower seeds yet. We go on like this till saturday is just a ben-gay memory. The rain is light but the ground is mildly muddy. I am (whatever the opposite of mildly is) muddy. Jude's garden "tan" is approaching qualifying her for affirmative action positions if there were any left. So sunday. More of the same. And a trip to home depot to buy the undercalculated brick scalopee thingees, to buy a boy's toy to take out the next set of interfering roots from the bischoffia tree (to whom I apologized profusely while continuing to cut). $18 for a razor toothed prunning saw that did the job in 3.67 minutes and didn't mind getting muddy. Finally all the white brick trim was in and looking very neat. We left one two foot fan palm in the middle of the strip, surrounded it with broken popcorn brick pieces to simulate a circle, I set some stepping stones in the two and a half foot wide strip just behind where the caddy's front door would be if we always hit the car-parking mark, and ripped open the bag of wildflower promises that got us into this "quick little job" in the first place. The stuff is embedded in pinky-mauve paper batting and chopped up old Marlboro packs. We spread it festively the entire length of the strip, except where the fan palm and step stones were, watered it in heavily, and felt the first serious raindrops. We were able to get most of the garden tools and dissolvables inside before the deluge, and prayed our handiwork wasn't washing away. Then a hosing down, and 15 minutes each in the massage thingee I bought jude for xmas with personal ulterior motives, whipped up a melenge (that's martha stewart for casserole) of pork, old broccoli, two leftover kinds of couscous, sun-dried tomatoes and anything else I could find to add to this mulegatawnny. I nearly had enough strength to pick up the tom clancy I finally gave myself permission to read. It is 804 pages in 6 point type and weighs about as much as one of those white brick driveway liners. Other than that, not much this weekend. And you? Oh, yeah, we'll let you know when we get wildflowers. And you wondered what lesbians DO? ________________________ (C) 1997. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. May be commercially reprinted only in its entirety with written permission. Shelly Roberts is an internationally syndicated columnist, and the author of the #1 best-selling Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living. (Spinsters Ink.)