Sorry, no pictures.

My day got derailed. It seems like every time lately I "work ahead" so I can win myself a little free time, something comes up that eats that free time.

Today, it was the thing I dreamed about. No, I'm not writing this from a hospital-prison, but guess what? My yard was "written up" again. I'm particularly unhappy about it because I had just (a) sat down and forced myself to grade an exam (and write another one) so I wouldn't be scrambling next week and (b) I literally found the note (taped to my mailbox) when I was coming home from sending a little gift off to someone I think needs a little cheering up. (No good deed goes unpunished, I guess).

Anyway. I tried to call in and get a clarification because it just said "grass and weeds or brush" but OF COURSE the person in charge was out. So I decided to be pro-active - I used the string trimmer to knock down whatever the heck it is kind of weedy bluestem (it's a very short grass, so it's not big, but it has the turkeyfoot flowers. Maybe it's King Ranch? I don't know) that won't yield to my mower. (I still have to mow, apparently. Even though the grass is all of 3" tall and we haven't had appreciable rain in like six weeks. But I can do that some time next week).

I decided maybe the former leafpile was too brushy so I cut and pulled (and found some poison ivy, which I will probably wind up getting, as I didn't see it in time, and I was too furious to bother suiting up or putting on gloves before going to work). I filled my wheelbarrow about seven times and dumped it at the curb. (The seventh fill is still in there, there's no room to dump brush any more). My wheelbarrow has a flat tire AGAIN so it was extra effortful.

Then I looked at the back alley. Technically, I don't own it, and several people at church said I shouldn't have to be responsible for it, but I wondered if that was what triggered this whole thing. And I thought about trying to get the tree guy out. And about scraping together the cash to pay him. And about (briefly) cancelling my trip tomorrow because I'm blessed if I will drive 3 1/2 hours to a yarn shop and NOT buy yarn. But I wouldn't do that to Laura.

So I sighed, and decided to try it myself.

And I managed. I always manage. The whole thing took me three hours I was planning to use to make a batch of spaghetti Bolognese and then knit, but it's done. There's a giant brush pile at the corner of my lot on the alley, but maybe I can either recruit someone from church who has a pickup truck, or offer a student $30 for their help and a half-hour's use of their pickup to load it up and haul it to the dump. I cut my thumb on the tree saw (not badly, but it bled like crazy) and I came dangerously close to "bonking out" a couple times from lack of water (I find with the beta blocker I am far less tolerant of dehydration than I used to be). But I got it done.

The person DID call back while I was out. The lawn needs mowed (REALLY? The grass is super short. Whatever, I'll mow it next week) and she was concerned about "brush hanging in to the back alley" and assured me I had "ten whole days" to fix it. (NO. I have one week of "business days" - they count the Saturdays and Sundays as part of the ten days but if you need to hire someone, getting the notice late on a Friday afternoon means you've already lost two days, because almost no one works on the weekend here - other than the college professors, I guess). So I mow the lawn next week and call and assure her that most of the brush has been removed but by golly, they need to give more detailed directions.

I'm gonna be stiff tomorrow. I took a hot shower but I don't know what else I can do. I don't like taking ibuprofen - I worry about my stomach (I took one late in the day yesterday because of a bad headache and it didn't hurt my stomach, but I don't want to get back in the habit of using it heavily because it does have worse side effects (heart, especially) than was once thought.

Maybe I heat up a couple of my beanbag things and get into bed with them tonight, figuring heat will help keep things from stiffening up.

So, no photos of my little Pony families I've dreamed up, or of my current knitting, and no talk of making spag bol. Dangit. 

The only two upsides I can see: (a) it's done and (b) I won't need to worry about exercise tomorrow or probably Sunday seeing as I did a workout earlier today in addition to the very hard work of brushcutting for three hours.