I'm Going To Pave It, Paint It Green And Call It a Lawn...

I hate yard work.  Yeah, I said it.  I'd rather have dental work done.  Seriously.  If I could merely go to the dentist for an entire afternoon - get scraped, poked, flossed, polished, drilled, sucked, x-rayed and Novocained (and not necessarily in any particular order); come home and discover that my lawn had been mowed, my beds mulched and some minor weeding had been done - I'd think it the most wonderful trade-off on earth.  To all you nay-sayers who prefer to spend hours on your knees, sweating profusely in the hot sun, digging in the earth only to have a giant creature from some sort of horrible 80's B-flick skitter across your shoe or hand, I gag and roll my eyes at you...

You see, that is precisely it.  It was a gorgeous sunny day.  The kids were playing.  The husband was mowing.  And I got the brilliant idea to start weeding the giant eye-sore known as "the retaining wall".  Manual labor suits me just fine.  Pissily, I yanked.  I grabbed, pulled and chucked over my shoulder.  "Wanna sass me kid?  HAHA!  Take that!"  I imagined the what-the-hell-ever-it-was that I just ripped out of the ground actually taught my child some manners.  Oh yes, I could get into this.  Then. It. Happened.

The hairy barking tree spider that I am terrified inhabit all the dark crevices of any place I have to stick a hand into - appeared.  This bitch would have been the size of my fist had I of taken the time to draw a circle around it.  This monstrosity ran over my foot, carrying its egg sac, the size of a large gumball - looked up at me; hissed, spit and then gave me the finger.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!

Natural instinct told me to run into my house, get the keys to my Jeep and drive away, never coming back.  At the very least I wanted to scream like the giant baby that I am.  In my head, ear piercing girly screams echo'd throughout my neighborhood.  In reality I jumped.  Said a four letter word that would get my mouth soaped out by my mother and noticed my three small children watching me.  "Don't panic, Cathy.  Play it cool.  Don't terrify them, because if you do...no one will ever be raised brave enough to kill these goddamned things for you,"  I whispered to myself as fortification.  I sauntered up to my husband.

"Hoooooooney?  [I eyeballed the kids for good measure and to take stock of their interest level.  SHIT!  They're staring.  I have to speak in code...]  Do we have appropriate pestilent riddance?"  In true man form, he cocked his head, took his sweet-assed time and finally answered, "Nothing that you want."  Ugh.

"The spade.  Can you get me the spade?"  I think I may have shouted this at him, I'm not quite sure as panic was starting to take over.  At this inquiry, he actually looked frightened at what I might have come across, but complied.  He went into the garage, got the spade and handed it to me.  I walked back to the horror in my yard.  I swung for all I was worth.  Not once, not twice, but three times.  Tears threatened to spill.  I think I nearly passed out.  I gagged more than once.  I made an oath right then and there to never do yard work again...

And, I can tell you this: I killed the M F'ing thing.  Or did I?

This photo is courtesy of my nanny.  Taken next day in my garage with a cell phone.
Outside of some *minor* work done in red to illustrate, this photo has not been edited in any way.