Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.
At Ease, Civilians!
Be at ease and be at rest. Calm down and stay relaxed, please. I’m here to remind you that in work and life, pacing is very, very important. The suddenly warm weather we’re having after prolonged exposure to a cold, snowy, inhospitable climate-from-Hell is very dangerous, because it will make people want to do all of their end-of-winter chores in one weekend.
For those people, I have one word:
Don’t.
Ladders, rakes, shovels and clippers can be useful tools, but if you overindulge they will turn on you and they will hurt you. Accept his fact: our spring has been delayed. Nothing is as it should be in the final days of April. I know at least one person who has vowed to finally take the Christmas lights down off the highest peaks of his house this weekend.
More power to him. It is good to tackle the most delayed chores first. But there is no way you can catch up to the season in a single weekend.
I know what happens to muscles that have been idle too long under the strain of sudden activity. I’ve spent my career warning people about our relentlessly brutal and indiscriminate friend, gravity. I’m here to sound the alarm for what I believe is a VDW – a Very Dangerous Weekend.
Take it easy, really. We’ve skipped over spring. It’s going to be a long summer. Pace yourself.
Yours in Safety, Always,
Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty
B.S.O.R. is always preaching excessive caution and pressuring us to lay back and do less, but this weekend he may have a point. A cooped-up people can become over-active under the influence of a long-anticipated and unfairly delayed warm-up.
What’s on your to-do list?
Trail Baboon 
A cheery good morning all; doesn’t this weather just make you perk right up? Yesterday I switched to bare feet in sandals, and inaugurated the season with a couple of hours of absorbing rays in my zero-gravity chair.
There’s so much that needs tending to, I’ll get exhausted just writing the to-do list. Before anything else, I have to clean at least a few of my windows; they’re a disgrace. Then there’s a winter’s accumulation of dog poop in the back yard to contend with. There’s lots of yard work that needs doing, but I doubt that any will get done this weekend. We’ll be art crawling. But before I get that far, the daily Sudoku and NY Times crossword need taking care of, and then we head out for brunch. I had better brew myself a cup of coffee and get started. Have a great day, baboons.
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used to call the zero gravity chair the worldsmost comfortable chair. love that chair. just right for sudoku, coffee and ny times puzzle. enjoy the air
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Yes about the perking up, and the sandals. Feet freedom!
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I feel I need to point out, PJ, that you have your priorities all wrong – the top of the list should be to have a happy birthday. The windows and dog poop will keep.
Enjoy it, however you spend it!
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As it turns out, Linda, my windows are still a disgrace and the poop is still there, unfortunately, I think you’re right that they’ll still be there tomorrow and maybe even the next day. We went out for brunch. After we got home, I cooked up a large pot of dog food, and then retired to the zero-gravity chair with The Liar’s Club. A surprise visit from a couple of friends with a huge bouquet of roses interrupted my reverie, and now we’re headed for more St. Paul Art Crawl and a nice dinner. It’s a rough program, at my age you have to pace yourself for it.
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Enjoj pj
Thanks for the heads up Linda
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Happy birthday, PJ!
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A very happy birthday to you, PJ!
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Same here.
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Happy Birthday PJ!
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its time to get out and play. i will be finding any excuse to be outside during the next 48 hours. slept with the bedroom patio door open last night it was glorious. if i remove the dog poop i wont have any yard at all. all things in moderation eh bsor?
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yes!
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Darling Daughter decided on her own to get started with the poop scooping earlier this week. Now I have a mound of poo to deal with (she moved it from all over the yard to one spot in the yard…I think I shall call it Mt Pupu).
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hot sauce on the hostas, peonies and bulbs to give them a chance against the starving predators out there. fence to keep the puppies (150 pounds of puppies) out of the hostas. they run like the wind, skidding like a popeye cartoon over the sublimely emerging buds snapping them off at the point of entry. its so fun to watch. poor home depot, bachmans and those flower folks. bachmans pushed all their flowers back a month. home depot has them shipped in from bum fork alabama where they dont care if its snowing when the truck arrives. the depots i have been in recently have rose buses in the tape measure aisle and geraniums gently rumbling to the hum of the paint shakers. ah spring in the midwest 2013. a wonder to behold
wanna see god laugh? make plans
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🙂
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Good morning. I’m in the Cities for a birthday celebration. I agree with Rafferty, there is plenty of time left for all those spring chores and, anyway, I’m not at home. When I do get back home, however, I might be tempted to go a little crazy because spring also is the start of the gardening season and gardening is my favorite thing.
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the springtime wafts in from over there like it isnt late at all.
it comes in with an aire of savoir faire and nonchalance
while our hearts beat faster but it is like a movie star so cool and above it all
that even while the robins and finches fighting for space in the sunlight
welcome the absent stranger.
last tufts of snow under the shrubs will not return again.
its time to think lemonade and sun tea
herb gardens and lawn mower tune ups
garage cleaning and outdoor tunes
welcome you omnipotent arrogant pig
i love you
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Your words, tim? You are fabulously poetic this AM.
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Yes and thanks
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Nice job, tim. Mother Nature in all her arrogance and swagger, but is that anyway to talk to your love?
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Multi level dysfunctionality
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oh yeah!
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We’re spending the weekend in Winona, but it feels almost like playing hookey (that doesn’t look right – hookie?). There are thousands of things that need doing, getting bumped to next weekend. Cleaning front and back porches is at the top of my list, and raking… But wait – we’re retired – there’s Monday and Tuesday!
On a happy note, we opened up the screen porch yesterday and had supper out there. 🙂
Have a great weekend, baboons.
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Along with taking care of Mt Pupu and its rolling nearby foothills, I have a bike ride on the agenda. Getting Daughter’s little solar car out (built from a kit – it’s about 8 inches long – we put it together a couple weekends ago, and then it snowed…needs to be outdoors to run). Take the pooch (creator of Mt Pupu and its foothills) out for a walk. But primarily standing outside for a bit with my face to the sun, appreciating the warmth.
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Morning–
Sometimes I don’t feel like a real farmer; my hours are all messed up as I don’t go to bed nor get up with the sun. Well, not if I can help it anyway.
I wondered about starting a to do list yesterday, but then it it would say things like ‘Plant corn’ which involves so much and seems to obvious it’s kinda silly to put that down on paper…
I met a friend for lunch yesterday and we sat outside at the restaurant. It was windy but warm. And the owner came over and said we were the first people to eat outside in his new deck.
Took the snow fence down yesterday. Finally. Got a new stereo and speakers installed in a tractor, checked tires and at the end of the day had to go cut up a large tree branch that had fallen across the road preventing wife and daughter from getting home with pizza.
This weekend is building a temporary fence and letting the adolescent ducks outside, getting my straw bales in place for a garden, grading the road, painting some tractor duals, playing with Amelia and seeing a show tomorrow afternoon. Not necessarily in that order.
I did spend a few minutes standing out on the deck last night. Haven’t pulled my anti-gravity chair out yet.
Absorb the sun everyone!
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Big list
Makes me feel like a slacker
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Greetings! Much as I miss our house we lost, I do NOT miss the yard work! Ah, the beauty of renting … But it sucks that there’s no place to put my Earth Boxes either. There’s a karate tournament today, but I stayed home and just woke up from a nap. Guess I should get some groceries and figure our dinner before the boys get home from said tournament. Ben is doing Black Belt Sparring and that is the LAST event of the day, so they should be home around 5 I think. I do miss watching the events and competing myself, but I got over it.
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Just back from Fargo. The garage is calling me. Perhaps it will get cleaned out tomorrow. Husband made sourdough starter this week, so I think that I will bake tomorrow. The Magic Flute wenty well last night. Daughter’s best friend was wonderful as Papagena. All the other leads were graduate students, and she is only a freshman. This is the third trip to Fargo this month, so I have not been able to get much done at all on weekends. The warm weather is just wonderful!
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Not much on my to-do list this weekend…plant some basil seeds that should have been planted about a month ago, as well as some other seeds; work on de-junking & organizing some closets and the back entry; drop a load of junk, er, I mean stuff, at the thrift store; and sort through & “weed” my books. None of that sounds very appealing to me…maybe I will just play hookey from it all.
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Barn swallows are back! Saw 4 or maybe 6 tonight. Yay! Spring really is here now.
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My wife same large numbers of cormorants roosting in trees and about a dozen loons on the lake in Albert Lea on Friday.
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White throated sparrows are passing through.
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Nice post, i will share with my friends.
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Hi, mkb, welcome to the trail.
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Work. I worked yesterday from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. and will return to work later today. We have a new admission in our group home – someone who is very young and very noisy. My coworker for the weekend is not so young, but very noisy and chatty. I’m so used to quiet. I was completely exhausted when I got home last night. I felt like I was talking to two or three people at once all day yesterday, and when I think about it, I really was.
I need to rake the front yard and get some grass seed out. I’d like to start a garden on the boulevard near the corner of my driveway. Grass always dies there and it discourages me every year. Any suggestions for boulevard-tough plantings? I’m thinking native grasses and coneflowers. I also have plenty of branches down in the back – down the hill – that need to be picked up. I uncovered the lower garden and it’s ready for planting.
First, Pippin gets a walk!
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Coneflowers do well on my boulevard. I also have some daylilies out there (not the common orange kind, some different colors). I might also have some ‘Blue Clips’ bellflowers out there. I fill in with nasturtiums and snapdragons.
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I like the idea of coneflowers. They are quite hardy and they come in such great shapes and colors now.
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And they seem to do better than some other plants in a drought.
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Having returned from the cities, I am ready to tackle as many of the spring jobs in and around the house as I can today. No need for a list. I will just get started with the first thing I come to and go on to the next when the first one is done. There is more than enough to keep me busy. However, Rafferty should not worry about me. I am no longer a ball of fire when it comes to getting things done. I am sure I that the pace at which I work will not be too fast from the perspective of BRSOR.
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Despite our best intentions, the siren call of the garden was too much for us, and husband is out dgiging up part of the lawn right next to the garden fence so we can plant half-runner type beans along the outside of the garden proper.
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I cut down the miscanthus yesterday. It had been flattened by the repeated coatings of snow and ice, and was pretty darned messy-looking. Did a little light raking, but didn’t overdo it.
Today I had breakfast out with a friend and went through the Art In Bloom exhibit at MIA. A little light rain here, not very much, but encouragement for the early green.
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I wish Art in Bloom had been a different weekend – really liked it the one time I got there.
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So how’d everyone do on their to do lists? Got most of mine done plus a few extras.
Chirping barn swallows kept me company while I made a fence for the ducks.
I plan on sitting on the deck later.
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Well, the bed for the beans is dug, the clods of dirt and grass are at the curb, the sourdough bread is baked, but the laundry is not yet put away, and the kitchen floor needs to be scrubbed. We were serenaded by grackles (ugh). The terrier was happy to lie in the warm sun in the middle of garlic patc, while we worked on the bean bed. Now husband is mixing up the sourdough waffle mix for tomorrow morning. I will put away the laundry.
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I got the lawn depooped, and dining room windows cleaned on the inside. I didn’t have an overly ambitious agenda so as not to disappoint myself, and I didn’t.
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Happy Birthday yesterday, PJ – sounds like you did it well.
Back from Winona, where we went to a Folk Dance reunion last night. Also took our bikes so we could ride around for the region’s Art Tour – Winona is wonderful for biking, very flat. So no yard work got done, but we did read the Sunday paper on the screen porch.
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Morning all…. nice topic as I was busy with my list over the weekend and didn’t get to the trail. Got my straw bales and got them started. Cleaned out garage. Painted and papered and mod podged some little blocks for baby gifts. Started getting stuff sorted for garage sale this weekend. Shopping w/ Teenager (aka torture). Took time to make a couple of cards and plenty of reading time as well. Glorious weekend!
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