Bags of Fury

I have a pretty humorous story of how our weekend began last week. If you have the time, I invite you to sit and have a little laugh at our expense!

We kicked off our weekend by scrambling around the house Friday morning desperately trying to get everything ready for few days away from home. Paul had a laundry list of things to accomplish before leaving town (which we had initially planned to be around 10am). After he did his workout he needed to fertilize the lawn. Well, the sun had already dried the morning dew and Paul proceeded to spray the lawn roughly with the hose to insure that the fertilizer would stick better. Side note: We are new home owners and didn't realize the 1st fertilizing app should have been laid before the middle of May. So - here we are a good month behind sprinkling on the early spring weed killing Scott brand fertilizer.

But we were desperate for the weed killer! So Paul starts to apply the fertilizer with that cheaply manufactured spreader and realizes he hadn't changed out of his new running shoes; so he ran to change into his junky pair of tennis shoes. Upon coming back to the spreader, he discovers that he forgot to close the dispenser and now we have an ant hill of fertilizer piled in one spot. He quickly closes the dispenser and frantically tries to spread the pile with his hands (again - remember this is the weed killer stuff and if it's applied too heavily, it will kill the lawn!). He almost clears the spots and on his last hand swipe - my novice lawnkeeper of a husband manages to get some of the fertilizer in his eye. All the while, I am outside in the driveway racing against the clock constructing a deluxe umbrella stroller for the week endeavors.

My husband is saying "April, go in the garbage and check the fertilizer bag for instruction on what to do if it gets in your eyes."

I am like... oh, you've got to be kidding me! But I figured this wasn't the time to be a smart ass wife, so I scurried over to check out the instructions which ingeniously said to "flush eyes for 15-20 mins."

I asked him if there was anything I could do while he used the garden hose to rinse his eyes (with the hands that he spread the pile fertilizer with). He told me to finish the spreading on the lawn..... so, now it's ME verses Fertilizer Spreader. Mind you, I have never worked this apparatus in my life. It had a lever on the left side, this twirling device in the center of the bucket and a loose handle.

I am shouting to my poor blind husband - "How in the H do I work this thing?" I also asked him what part of the front yard he's already done, what pattern he was doing... all the while he is trying to save his eye from the burning death of poison. So - I finally get rockin with this spreader and the neighbor lady walks across the street to ask me something. She just had an operation, so I stopoed to ask her how it went.

A few minutes later, my husband shouts from his fetal position "April - the fertilizer is piling up again!!" OPPS! It seems I also didn't realize that if you didn't close the dispenser, it would continue to drain out the of the bucket. So this is now 2 piles of collected weed killing fertilizer that has pooled up in our front yard. I quickly leave my neighbor and resume my walking laps around the front yard, trying to avoid my husband who is now hand spreading another ant hill of white granules with one hand, while covering his wounded eyes with the other.

I was making my victorious laps through the back yard when I realized that this mixture of annoying set backs was not going to spread through the whole lawn. Well, why would it when a good portion of the bag has been accidentally dumped in two places? So - I run out of the supply and walk back to the garage to find Paul pacing back and forth in the garage blinking his eyes several times.

"The burning has stopped" he says.

"Good" I answer, "I continued spreading until the whole thing was gone".

He just stares at me, "You mean it didn't cover the whole yard?"

"No, how could it when so much was lost?"

This is the point in my tale when I censor the profanity that spewed from my husband. Frustrated had gotten the best of him. He usually has a pretty clean mouth - but I think the neighbors got a pretty good glimpse of his rare side.

"Everything that could go wrong in the last 15 mins - DID!" He shouted between his swearing. I couldn't help but start laughing. His eye was better (and everything turned out fine with that by the way), we were under a time crunch because by now it already past 10am- the baby should have woken up from his nap about 20 mins AGO (we still can't believe that he didn't and that added time actually allowed us to straighten out the morning mess), I still had to feed the baby, pack the cooler of his frozen food, pack up the car - and Paul still had to take a shower and PACK FOR THE WEEKEND (because my husband is totally incapable of ever packing his clothes any sooner than right before we leave - ugh!)

So, here are both laughing. Realizing that we need to finish the yard because we can not leave half of it fertilized and ignore the other half. But we bought this early spring mixture on clearance, because the rest of the world has already applied this type of fertilizer. So - we had to take a chance that the store will even have another bag left. After we collected ourselves, Paul heads for the store.

While he is gone, I go back to my task at hand - the stroller! Piece of cake! What I didn't expect, was waving to my neighbor's 4 year old daughter across the street, only to watch has her grandmother comes out of the house behind her - and trips on the porch and face plants into the shrubs!! Poor grandma! I hustle and bustle across the street to make sure the woman didn't crack her head on the cement. She got away with a nasty scrape on her elbow and a bruised ego. I found out later that she messed up her ankle a bit too. Ouch!

The rest of the morning ironed itself out well. Menards did have 1 bag of the fiery left that Paul applied before showering and packing to leave. We didn't get on the freeway until after 12pm. We both figured the weekend could only go up from there... or could it?

...Stay tuned