Esteban has been working so intensively hard on his various projects once more that I rarely see the man. I find myself staring at him when I do see him, as if I don’t recognize him. ‘Him? I married him? Where was I when that happened?’ I think he’s going a bit feral without the female attention. He’s been wearing his long hair sans ponytail and it is all bushy from the humidity. I don’t think he’s had pants on in weeks because he’s essentially supervising himself.
I could very easily get used to the single life, as long as there was someone there to kill any moths that get into the house for me. And open ketchup bottles.
Nah, on second thought, I’m not that crazy about ketchup. Although my last jar of lingonberries did gave me a bit of a problem. Ah well. So much for that.
I was complaining to Scotty Boom Boom about the way this summer is already circling around the seasonal drain and I hadn’t gotten nary a single project done that I had intended. In fact, all the projects I have for this year are really last year’s projects that never were accomplished last year. For instance, I’m really sick of looking at a strip of bare earth in the front of our house where Esteban dumped dirt four summer’s ago, to prevent the basement from leaking. The idea was to put some landscaping there, a bed of some sort and a tree I had fallen in love with last summer, but nothing ever came of it. Why? Because it requires warm weather and in the summer, we are two carefree mofos, not to mention the fact that Esteban worked constantly all last summer and has begun to do the same this summer.
‘Well, hell, I can dig a hole for you!’ Scotty Boom Boom offered, also volunteering our good friend Eric. I promised them an ice cold 12-pack of Leinie’s Creamy Dark, a large High Maintenance Pizza, which I would go and get so it would be hot and lovely when they were done planting my tree. And then Scott said that it’s not even a little hard to remove the existing sod from an area and he just did a ten by ten square in like ten minutes by kicking a shovel or something, so I threw in some brownies and bought myself some indentured servants’ er, I mean, nice friends who are willing to do manual labor for good eats and cold beer.
So my plan was to go to The Hundred Dollar Store (aka Home Depot’ so called because every time I walk into that place, it costs no less than $100), purchase some fancy landscaping spray paint (the nozzle points down’ it costs like $4 more than regular stuff. I guess so you don’t have to tilt your wrist or something. I dunno. I’m such a sucker.), some landscaping fabric, stakes, and edging. Cool. Did that. Then Esteban starts to play with the project, even though I specifically was tackling this with my own resources and pinnache. Maybe we shouldn’t use the black edging stuff? Maybe we should get bricks? Well, yes, dear, but I got the black edging stuff so you wouldn’t have to edge and I didn’t get bricks so I wouldn’t have to use the truck. So it goes. God. How to go from My So-Called Life to The Real World to Everyone Loves Raymond in ten easy years. Blech.
Ok, I was all set. The boys were going to come over when I had the tree. My job for today’ get beer, spray paint the swoopy design that the bed would be in, buy a tree, make brownies, get pizza. No big. I could handle this.
I got their preferred beer and the brownie ingrediants on my lunch hour. Check one and a half things off the list. I was so efficient. And I wasn’t even using a LIST! I was in the zone. I was kicking ass and taking names at the organization.
I should have known that it couldn’t be that easy.
I raced home and changed into some old shorts (taking caution to not wear my cute sporty new clothes’ very frugal, very efficient). Then I stepped outside and grabbed the spray paint. I looked down at my cute white sneakers and had a thought. Oooh, if the wind blows the wrong way, I’m going to get yellow spray paint all over my sneakers. I slipped them off and then proceeded to plot out the new bed.
And speared the bare arch of my foot with a stick which was poking out of the ground.
What is it with me and subcutaneous wood? I mean, seriously. I must have been one of the Romans who nailed Christ to the cross in a former life or something and this is my debt, to spear myself ridiculously with errant sharp objects. I tried to tough out the pain but then I realized that it was bleedy. Lawn Graffitti 101 was concluded for the day. I hobbled into the house, passing with chagrin my lovely white sneakers with the big thick soles and then poured a bunch of hydrogen peroxide over the puncture, followed by a nice Band-Aid. Then it started to swell, so I put it up with an ice pack. I sat there and basically stewed because that stick used to be a very small fir tree that Esteban had not liked in the front yard. I had tried nursing it back to health with Muracid and all sorts of stuff, but it just gave up and turned orange. And sat there for a year, all orange and Charlie Brown Christmas, but without the kids standing around, tilting their heads up singing ‘Loo loo loo loo loooo loooo loo loo’ with their lips pursed up into the sky. So apparently, he had gotten sick of it and cut it off at ground level. Well, almost ground level. It was enough to drive a person batty. Or suddenly understand all of those disgruntled hostile wives that there are in the world.
God, it’s a good thing I didn’t attempt brownies. I might have sniffed cocoa into my sinus’ and thought I was Anson Williams, beloved character actor well-known for his riveting portrayal of ‘Potsy Webber’ on televisions Happy Days. And who knows what might have happened then? I shudder even to think.
Esteban later came home and announced that we had to go get the tree. I slapped on my hippy sandals and limped out to the truck. We went to the nursery and I picked out my tree, ignoring Esteban’s plebian tree preferences. We’ve already got two towering pine trees’ I’d like some snobby flora for once. We finally found my Weeping Mulberry tree. I had told Esteban that I thought it was about $120, so he was very pleased to see that I had been mistaken and it was only $70. I hobbled back into the greenery and purchased my tree and a bag of poo to line the hole.
Esteban put it into the truck bed, standing upright, and directed me to hold it up from inside the cab. I shook my head, thinking of the tree snapping off at cab height, but he would hear nothing off laying the thing on its side. Then one of the garden center girls came out and suggested that we lay the thing on its side, but he brushed her off, saying ‘We only live seven miles away’. We stopped at the Poo Porch (where they keep the manure’ I made that name up, though. No one thought it was funny. Esteban accused me of being four-years-old. Sometimes I feel very alone. sniff) and picked up the bag of manure when the owner came out and suggested that we lay the tree down on its side, stating that the leaves would shrivel off the thing and die. Finally, Esteban rolled his eyes and flipped the tree downward, envisioning all of the dirt he’d have to sweep out of the bed of his truck. And this is the guy who drove around for two weeks with Joel’s rotting silage in the back when it was 90 degrees. Chyeah. Whatever.
We started to move and the tree shifted. I looked into the back and noticed that he had the branches pointing down, with the pot end in the front of the truck. I mentioned that the inertia of the truck moving would force the tree toward the tailgate of the truck, essentially breaking all of the branches. He sighed, rolled his eyes again, and stopped the truck, getting out to flip it around.
And then he stubbed his toe on the wheel of the truck. He winced in utter agony and then returned to the truck. He reached down and peeled the toenail from his big toe completely off. I swear to God, it was like a scene from a horror movie. I could almost hear the “Eee Eee Eee!” from Psycho. I think I saw sinew. I’m not sure. I’ve never seen sinew, but if I had to point out sineous tissue, I would have had to say that’s it.
I almost fainted. The vision of the tender white inner arch of my foot being impaled by an inch-thick rotten twig was immediately driven from my mind by the image of him peeling back his broken toenail. GAH! I almost started to weep for him in the car. He turned white. Poor guy. I tried to make him as comfortable as possible, offering to drive, but he toughed it off after a few blocks. Being a guy is so hard sometimes. If it had been me, I would still be crying. I would have already called in sick tomorrow with Naked Toe. Eeesh.
So there it is. I got nailed in the foot by an ex-tree that Esteban had handled poorly. Esteban got nailed in the foot by the tree that is going in almost the exact same spot as the Former Twig.
Keep scoffing at karma. Go ahead. It will bite you in the ass every time.
And the next time some tree-hugging hippy tells me to be nice to the earth and plant a tree, I’m going to tell him to pack his anal cavity with hummus and back slowly into a cage of badgers. And if that takes too long, I’ll just tell him to go to hell.
Damn wooden stuff.
