With All That Out of the Way, It Finally Feels Like Summer…

It seems as if a lifetime has been lived since the last day of school just a week ago.

Remember last year around the last day of school when we drove past the house with the “zombie children” all over their front yard?

Creepy.

They were at it again.

Except this year’s theme was something about “keeping an eye on you” I’m guessing from ALL THE EYEBALLS peeping out at us while we waited at the stop light and Ellie snapped these pictures.

What in the…?

I certainly got the feeling I was being stared down.

Bless their hearts,

I think they THOUGHT they were accomplishing something less creepy 

than smear-faced, oddly-positioned zombie children, 

but NOT BY MUCH.

The weather hasn’t been able to decide between being extremely hot and extremely chilly but landed on being most certainly, overcast.

Which hasn’t helped with the “it doesn’t feel like summer yet” feelings.

Our schedule has been chock full.

Mostly fun stuff like attending several graduation parties which allowed me to not have to worry about cooking on a weekend for the past SEVERAL weekends.

BBQ, Stromboli, pulled chicken, tacos, gyros, not to even mention the cupcakes and cookies!! 

It’s been great and waist-widening.

 Incidentally:  I signed the girls up for a free summer teen membership at my gym 

where they tried out ALL THE MACHINES in the first 10 minutes. 

Which was somewhat distracting since 

I just wanted to get in, exercise and get out.

There’s talk of taking a Zumba class.

I’ll be sure to update you.

Our cute little dump truck that lived in our back yard for so long, got moved and replaced by a back hoe.

Within an hour, I heard a high pitched “honk honk” and realized two things:

1) Back hoes have horns.

2) I was being honked at to come outside. 
From a back hoe.

Jack had hit a fairly large root to our beloved Sycamore tree and needed permission to cut through it as it might be the death of it.

What?!

Jack told me to talk it over with Monte and let him know by the next day on how to proceed.

I love our old Sycamore!

My emotions for that tree are the stuff of country songs.

Especially how it took a nasty lightning strike several years ago, sparing our house and it survived despite a nasty scar and eight arborists telling us it was a goner.

How could we kill our beloved Sycamore for a patio 

when a lightning strike couldn’t take it down?

Monte and I called our builder, Paul who happened to major in something having to do with plants and knew a thing or two about root systems.

He examined the root in question and determined it was small and therefore not a main artery for the tree which more than likely had many more and significantly larger roots.

The patio was back on as planned.

Whew!

Monte and I breathed a sigh of relief until the washing machine repairman told me that something-something was broken and needed replacing since some doo-hickey was stripped.

It was going to be at least $275.

What is the opposite of whew?

Monte and I did a quick online search of what new machines cost and decided to try to save the old one which could last five more years.

The washer could be like our beloved Sycamore.

So, while we waited on the parts to come in, the laundry piled up.

In between time, the concrete for the patio was poured from the large concrete truck in our driveway.

And a mound of sand was deposited in our driveway for the pavers.

The first night the back hoe was left in our back yard we tried to open the door but it was locked.

You KNOW we checked.

The next night, we discovered the door was open and the keys were in it!

Monte felt there were just too many levers to comfortably “take a spin” around the yard.

Or neighborhood.

Hey, it has a horn so we could’ve

honked at the neighbors.

I didn’t realize Monte was snapping pictures as I exited the back hoe.

It’s was a bit treacherous since there were no steps and it wasn't on level ground and I had on flip flops.

So Monte caught the exact moment I rolled my ankle and let out a big, “OUCH!”

On the day the washing machine repairman came back,  it was discovered that a significant piece of washing machine technology was completely rusted through deeming it unfixable.

News that would’ve been 

much more helpful several days earlier 

when we were contemplating fixing or buying new

and our pile of laundry wasn’t the size of Mt. Everest. 

At that point, I was knee-deep in helping a friend with her son’s graduation party and fresh off the torment of the decision to proceed or not proceed with possibly-probably-not killing our beloved Sycamore tree over a patio install.

Not to mention the soul-sucking brain-dead 

that the end of the school year leaves one in.

I had nothing left in which to 

research, 

discern 

or pick out 

a new washing machine.

Luckily, Monte could hear that in my voice when I called to tell him the news.

He elected himself for the job.

All I told him was that I did not want anything newfangled, low-flow or such that would require me to work within a “learning curve” to do laundry.

No. Way.

I wanted a top loading, non-stinky, non-molding, non-special-detergent machine that actually left clothes smelling WAY BETTER than when I put them in.

That was a harder find than Monte thought.

He could not believe the store staff that tried to “sell" him on things like,

“Doing more loads with less clothes is fine, your wife won’t mind!” 

“Your wife will love this once she learns the 

extremely specific and important way it receives detergent.”

“This model doesn’t smell nearly as bad as the previous one!’

Monte would have none of it and kept to my requests.

Which can sometimes be hard for him. 

He LOVES new technology. 

Or even just things that say “new and improved”.

Yesterday, after over a week with no washing machine, this beauty arrived:

Hello, gorgeous!

The delivery was ill-timed as the ENORMOUS truck was trying to find a place to park on my street as the back hoe was being loaded onto a trailer attached to a truck that was already parked on our street. Not to mention the other two trucks parked on our street. Plus our cars. I felt the need to “help” them back into our driveway.

To say that it was tight driving was a complete understatement.

But it was all worth it.

And I’ve been doing laundry HAPPILY ever after since.

It’s so great to have clean clothes!

And it has decided to be hot and sunny so we actually went to the pool yesterday and then a farmer’s market so it FINALLY feels like summer…

THE END