the great outdoors

Last week an enormous truck dumped not one but two massive loads of mulch in our driveway.  It was a huge amount of landscaping material, a mountain of mulch that the kids happily scrambled over as they got off the bus on Friday afternoon.

Now, the reality is that I don’t really do the outdoors.  Not voluntarily, anyway.  Grass makes me itchy, I hate to sweat, and as far as I’m concerned pollen is the antichrist.  (And North Carolina seems to have offered up widespread real estate to the prince of darkness.)  Add the fact that the last time I helped with landscaping my back ached for days and we’re looking at a Big Fat No Go for me.  So the gigantic pile of mulch sat in the driveway, waiting patiently for BrightSide to arrive home from work.

But it seems as much as I dislike yard work, that’s how much BS throws himself into his outdoor projects.  I can’t quite say if he really loves it (mostly because I can’t imagine anyone loving yard work), but he takes a lot of pride in all-things-outside.  The yard, the rose bushes and trees, the landscaping overall…these are things he has an opinion about, whereas I honestly have none.  Zilch. Though I do try to be enthusiastic after BrightSide has mowed the grass or worked in the flower beds.  I like to keep the peace if I can.

So anyway, Saturday came and BrightSide tackled the mulch pile like a man on a mission.  He’d brought his dad’s tractor over to help with the job, which turned out to be a very good thing because BS ended up distributing mulch piles around our property as well as our neighbor’s.  I did things in the house all morning, took T-man on an outing that afternoon, and came back to find BrightSide still working in the yard.

(PSA here: I have begged and pleaded to no avail.  BrightSide, please, for the love of all things holy, wear sunscreen when you’re outside all day.  No, we’re not at the beach, but the sun’s rays also shine inland and you burn like a piece of Wonder bread forgotten in the toaster every single time. Love you!  Mean it!)

We finished out the day with a beautiful (though mulch-y smelling) yard and one very exhausted man in the house.  Little did he know that his work inside the back fence would be in vain.

On Sunday morning we put the dogs outside while we started getting ready, but when I let them back in the house I took one look at Gracie and had an out-of-body experience.    Her feet were a dark brown mess from pads to (are they called ankles on a dog?)…higher than that even.  Her fur was filthy, so brown it was almost black, and there were clumps of dirt and mulch stuck to the fringe on her hind legs.  That dog looked like she was wearing four leather boots.  Four crappy-looking leather boots.  That were tracking dirt all over my floors.

I took one long look, managed not to flip out, and threw her back into the yard.  I left for church figuring we’d have to give her a bath sometime that day but couldn’t imagine when I’d fit it in…we already had a pretty full plate.  When I let her back in at dinner, though, her feet were miraculously clean(ish).  I guess she’d rubbed the dirt off in the grass, which is great because giving the dogs a bath is another chore that throws my back out.  Man, I’m getting old…

So here we are on Monday morning: we were doing our usual morning routine and everything was going smoothly.  I let the dogs outside after they ate breakfast so I could shower, but when I opened the door to call them back they both return with filthy feet.  And when I say “filthy” I mean grimy, grubby, nasty feet that are (once again!) dropping dirt and mulch EVERYWHERE.  I. can’t. even.

It’s moments like this that I find God has an excellent sense of timing.  The kids were out of the house already, so it wasn’t really a problem that I was cursing a blue streak as I scrubbed at eight paws in a futile attempt to keep the damage to a minimum.  It didn’t help that I was still in my bare feet, so as I was wiping their paws off I was grinding grains of dirt and mulch into my soles.

I didn’t figure out what they were really up to until I was in the yard later that day.  There was a giant hole in the mulch to the left of the back door.  I’d thought maybe Gracie was just digging for the fun of it, but it turns out she was actually burying and then digging up her rawhide bone.  For real?  I didn’t know dogs actually did that; I thought it was just something they put in cartoons!  Turns out it’s not so funny when four muck-covered feet carry a filthy rawhide back into my house.  Gracie, Gracie, Gracie…