Smoke a Cigarette, Plant the Marigolds

So I woke up this morning at 4:30 and thought, wow, I don't feel well. . . this feels like a hangover but I didn't drink last night, I wouldn't do that on a work night, would I? And then I woke up a little more and realized OH god, yes I would, oh fuck this is a hangover, and a well deserved one at that. So I staggered to the bathroom and had an alka seltzer and cursed myself. I really only meant to have like one or two beers & dinner at the Westville while I did my laundry across the street, but damn, of course that was impossible, my friends R & T were there, and then my friend J, and then my friend C and another of my friends J (this is like one of those weird conspiracy things about Abraham Lincoln and JFK, or John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, isn't it? Why do all my friends' names begin with J? There's Jodi & Jeff & Jonas & Jay - 2 or 3 Jays, actually - and Jason & James & oh, it goes on & on) so anyway, there was laughter & merriment & french fries & way way too many beers. Oh gods I was speaking French, wasn't I? This is bad. Ow.

So this morning I was just overjoyed when my boss called at 8:30 to tell me to wear grungy clothes since I was going to need to meet him at the warehouse to move more heavy filthy things around, and I groused about it all day. He called almost every half hour today too and it was all annoying. But bless his little ADHD heart, because when I finally did meet him at the warehouse it was a little after 4, and I didn't have to do too much, and then I skived off (note cool usage of brit term, extra points) for the last hour of work, yes thank you bebby jebus! So I got to come home, have a cigarette, and plant the marigolds that had been waiting since Saturday.

This weekend I worked like a dog and busted my ass in the garden. These are weird similes actually: my dogs don't work hard at all, in fact they don't even work, although it is true that they keep careful track of every dog that passes by the house. There are times when I might not even know a dog was being walked down my street if it wasn't for my two helpful dogs, ever ready to alert me to the presence of another dog. And I didn't bust my ass at all, it's my back and shoulders that are suffering. How would you bust your ass by working? You bust your ass by falling on it, and that doesn't happen when you're working; it usually happens when you're drunk. At least it tends to happen to me when I'm drunk, or, of course, when I'm stone cold sober and walking around town spacing out, and then everyone believes I'm drunk anyway.

So I worked like a human, busted my back, and dug up the whole vegetable garden again with a shovel this time, worked a bunch of compost into it, planted about half of it, put down a lot more mulch (and all this compost & mulch & stuff had to be hauled around first you know) around the roses and flowers in the back, mowed my whole huge gigantic lawn, weeded the front flower bed, planted petunias in the old rusty wheelbarrow by the mailbox (hey! we is country here!) and so on. If I ever get the damn digital camera I won on Ebay I think I'm going to start a new blog, maybe just on flickr to track all the gardens from spring to fall. Won't that be wholesome and lovely? I bet we all can hardly wait.