It’s two in the morning, and after a full day of yard work/hard work, Daddy is officially tired. For the last two hours, I’ve been sitting on the porch with my friend Jesse, drinking beer and generally enjoying myself despite the fact that my entire body has been saying, “What the fuck, man?” all day long. I just took a shower, and now I’m a different skin color. Despite all my efforts under the water, I’m pretty sure I still have black boogers inside my nostrils. You know how it is when you work in the dirt. Now I’m sitting at Ray and Jesse’s dining room table, which is odd, since I’m used to writing in a bed or a chair. But it’s nice because I can rest my elbows in front of me and keep my head from hitting the keyboard.

Okay, I think that’s enough for tonight. I’m should have just enough energy to walk ten steps to the bed in the next room.

When I got to Ray and Jesse’s, we spent some time making a plan and making a list of needed supplies. Then Ray and I went to Lowe’s, filled up the back of his SUV with mulch and such, and returned to the house. For a while, I stalled. Honestly, I was overwhelmed by all the work to do, especially the side of the house, Hellcat Alley. At one time it was a beautiful garden. Ray is an Old Catholic priest, and the garden is designed in the shape of a cross with a quadrant on each side. But as I understand it, one day Ray came home and said, “I can’t do this anymore,” and the garden went to hell in a handbasket. I think a similar thing happened about twenty years ago with my father and his fashion choices.

Here’s a picture of the Back Forty before I started.

I used to work at summer camp with a guy named Trey. Trey was southern in the best possible way and was always saying things like, “Don’t skinny dip with snapping turtles,” or, “Well, spit on the fire and call the dogs–I’m home.” One day after all the kids in his cabin had finished eating lunch, Trey’s assistant counselor, Hardy, just sat at the table, basically with his thumb up his butt. Trey threw up his hands and said,” Hardy, do something even if it’s wrong.”

So not knowing exactly where to start with Fayetteville’s Jungle, I told myself, Do something even if it’s wrong, and primed the weed eater. Headphones in my ears, weed eating to the beat, I felt like a dancing Rambo in the Amazon. Three and a half hours–and a mower, a yard rake, and several bags of trash–later, we started to see signs of progress. The plan is to put down mulch in the four quadrants around the cross, and we got the black tarp/mesh stuff laid down today, along with what mulch we had. The rest of the mulch comes tomorrow–seventy more bags. I swear, there’s a reason so many high school students work in the lawn care business. Their backs actually function.

About the time I moved on to edging and mowing the rest of Ray’s lawn (not pictured), a couple in a really cool car drove up. Turns out it was a 1966 MG, and they’d just come from a British car show. Anyway, they saw the portable storage unit outside the house, said they’d always loved the property, and were wondering if I was moving in. I said, “No, I’m helping some friends move out, but the house is for sale if you’d like to talk to the owner. I’ll go get him.” They said, “We don’t want to keep you from your work.” I said, “Believe me–I don’t mind the break.”

So while Ray showed the couple inside, I took a selfie with their car because that’s not weird or creepy.

I worked on the rest of the yard until I ran out of daylight, so tomorrow I’ll finish raking the front yard and move on to the back. The back used to be a literal pig pen and chicken coop, and there’s a section of the wire fence that’s been crushed by a fallen tree, so that should be fun. But don’t worry, I brought my anti-inflammatories. Anyway, tonight while Jesse went for Chinese take out, I started work on a rotten threshold in the kitchen. (Have tools, will travel.) Here’s a picture of the threshold after I tore out the rotten wood. EEK.

Unfortunately, neither I nor Ray own a circular saw, which means I had to cut the 1×8 and 2×8 I used with a hacksaw. This after I spent all my energy in the yard. Poor planning on my part, I admit. Anyway, when I started, I had only one hand on the saw. Then I had two hands on the saw. Then I started praying. Dear God, please part this board in two. I know rivers are more your thing, but maybe you could branch out just this once–for me.

Here’s where we are now. The threshold piece we bought at Lowe’s today wasn’t wide enough to cover the new wood, even though we got one of the widest options. So I’ll go back tomorrow in hopes that they’ve stocked a new item. Since I’m assuming that will not be the case, I may need to return to the lord in prayer and ask for just one more favor.

Here’s a door-frame pun I just thought of. In a hurry to cross my threshold? Go ahead–step on it!

I crack me up.

You know you’re tired when there’s delicious Chinese food in front of you, but raising your fork to your mouth is so challenging that you consider simply going hungry. I thought, If my friends weren’t here, I’d lay the side of my face on this table and shovel my General Tso’s Chicken into my mouth with my bare hands. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. But whatever would I do with this Egg Drop Soup? (Somehow I managed with my utensils.) Fortunately, the food perked me up, at least enough to drag my ass to the porch for a couple of hours. And I guess being tired (and a few beers) isn’t the worst thing for writing, since I’ve hit a thousand words in forty minutes. That’s serious record time.

But how to end this?

So many times today I thought, This is too much, I don’t know what to do. I guess behind those thoughts was another one maybe you’ve heard before–I can’t. My experience with thoughts like these is that they don’t just apply to yard work. Thoughts and beliefs like these, I guess, are rather like the sunglasses I wore all day today–they make everything darker. That means that when I consider writing a book, getting published, and realizing some of my dreams, those thoughts show up just like they did today while I was moving rocks around and wondering if the weeds I just whacked were poison ivy. Even with this blog, sometimes I think, I can’t do this anymore. But I’m reminded that doing something, even if it’s wrong, is better than standing around with your thumb up your butt. After all, blogs and books are written one word at a time. Stories in a leather-bound book and before-and-after pictures may lead you to believe that miracles happen in an instant, but it takes forty years in captivity and many small steps in the right direction for seas to part.