Pre-emergent

There are many things I was not at all familiar with before I became a co-homeowner. What need did I have for knowledge of what "being in escrow" meant (to be honest, I'm still miffed by that one), sump pumps, radon, lawn irrigation systems, and hardwood floor maintenance? Armed with knowledge I've gleaned from the always accurate Wikipedia, I pretend to know exactly how to prune a rose bush, eradicate fruit flies, care for delicate antiques and patch holes in the wall but all of these things I can do in the privacy of my own home without being told I'm doing it wrong by someone who is much wiser than I. That all came to a screeching halt today and I was exposed for the fraud I am by Henry, the friendly lawn man at my favorite garden center.

Here's what happened:

This spring, I decided that I would take over all of our lawn and gardening maintenance and by all of our lawn and gardening maintenance, I mean I intended on doing more than our previous maintenance plan which basically included mowing. Luckily, the Husband had no qualms with my hostile take-over of our yard work. This should have been a sign of things to come but it was not.

I was confident I could construct beautiful gardens in our backyard and have the most lush, green yard that every neighbor would envy as they drove slowly past our yard realizing they would soon come upon their own mediocre lawn and be faced with their own grassy shortcomings. Yes, I would work my magic and it would be as glorious as I had imagined. The only problem was that I had no magic. I knew nothing about lawn care and my history with plants was nothing short of murderous.

My parents got me a subscription to a local gardening publication which made me feel slightly more confident. In the February issue, there was a whole article about how to have the best lawn ever. It wasn't a terribly long article and laid out a lawn maintenance plan that seemed relatively easy. All I needed was some pre-emergent, not cut the grass too short and I was good to go. I had no idea what a pre-emergent was but I figured it wouldn't be difficult to find at the garden center so armed with my paltry understanding of pre-emergents, I headed to the garden center. It was at the garden center that I met Henry and where my lawn maintenance ineptitude was blatantly exposed.


Henry, being an older, kindly gentleman with glasses and a lot of enthusiasm for grass asked if I needed any help finding anything. I told him I'd been reading about lawn care and I was taking over our lawn maintenance this year. He told me he thought it was really wonderful I was taking such an active role in my lawn care and said that most people just throw stuff on their lawn and don't even know why they are doing it. Gulp. I tried to backpeddle saying that I just really read one article and I wasn't even really sure what it all meant so I still had a lot to learn but I really thought I needed a pre-emergent and I had a dandelion problem. Henry shook his head. Pre-emergents (much like their name implies) take care of weeds before they present themselves so my dandelions would require something else perhaps a post-emergent? Henry again shook his head and gave me the scientific name of three products that would most likely get rid of the dandelions. I was slightly bummed that Henry wasn't finding my lawn care humor very entertaining but, like I said, he was older and kindly and I wasn't going to hold his seriousness about weeds against him.

Clearly buying my lawn care expertise charade, Henry asked what type of grass I had in my yard. I looked at him thinking surely he was kidding but he was not. Sure, I can tell you the characteristics that would make a certain cow more favorable than another and can identify almost every purebred dog breed by sight but identify a type of grass? No dice. I ended up telling Henry our grass was green and not prickly. Since that didn't narrow it down for him, he informed me that Kentucky Bluegrass was really popular in the area and I probably had that. It sounded good so I went with it.

As it turns out a pre-emergent is just the beginning. Henry outlined an entire plan including fertilizer application, grub control, irrigation, seeding and winterizing that would take place over the next six months. Six months?!!?!? Multiple applications of various concoctions??!?! And I thought a pre-emergent would take care of everything. So, so naive.

In a month I will return to the garden center and seek out my man Henry and sheepishly admit that I did not commit the lawn care regime he laid out for me to memory and I, again, need to tap into his infinite wisdom of all things grass and weed related. What I thought was going to be easy-pezy is not going to be easy at all. I suggested to the Husband that he could have all of that responsibility back. He said he'd think about it and then he chuckled. I'm doomed.

Rent-A-Sheep

It has been many moons since my last post and it has all been for lack of good substance to post about. I know, I know, surely life in the plains provides plenty of good writing material, right? I mean, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a whole series. But alas, I've come up a little short.

It took me leaving the fine state of Kansas to bring me back to Call Me Alise with a story to tell. Whilst the Husband was traversing the globe being an international businessman, the Infant and I headed east to the land of my people: good ole Virginia. Spring in the Shenandoah Valley is one of my favorite times of year. We are spending the week with my parents, GG and Pop-pop, on the farm and upon our arrival, the fun times began to roll.

GG and Pop-pop love when the grandkiddies come for a visit and want them to get the full farming experience since all hail from wonderfully metropolitan places like Washington, DC and Kansas City (ha!). They arrange horseback riding lessons, duck feedings, rides on the tractor, chores and other fun rurally inspired activities. This visit was no different.

Shortly after arriving on the farm, the Infant and I settled in on the floor to toss around the very blocks I played with as a little whipper snapper. My parents said they had an errand to run, hopped in the pickup truck and left in a plume of dust. About 20 minutes later, they returned and said they there was a surprise waiting outside for the Infant. I hear the surprise before I see it and cannot help but laugh. There, standing on deck next to Pop-pop, was a young sheep. His name is George and he's a rental.

I may have mentioned to GG and Pop-pop that the Infant is particularly fond of his plethora of toy sheep. For some reason, we have accumulated roughly a half dozen stuffed sheep at home on the range and the Infant likes crawling around with one in each mit or wrestles them into submission. He loves them! So, GG and Pop-pop thought surely the Infant would get a kick out of a real, live sheep. They borrowed George from a neighbor up the road whose kids raise market lambs. For those of you who are familiar with the term "market lamb," do not fret: George is a family pet and is not likely bound for the auction block. In the meantime, George will remain on our farm frolicking about in the grass while the Infant squeals at him or tries to eat the grass himself. At the end of the week, our rented sheep will return to his proper home to join his wooly brethern.

P.S. The Infant may be the youngest mutton buster on the block but what he lacks in experience, he makes up for in style and charisma.

Costumed crusaders

I have relied on my college education to help me acquire gainful employment, work out complex statistical analysis (ha! Just kidding, Professor Robert E. Lee--not joking--tried his best but couldn't turn me into a statistical wizard) and provide a good foundation for understanding the world around me. Until recently, I thought my alma mater had given me everything I needed to go out into the world and whip up a mean editorial or communications packet, but I'm beginning to think she failed me.

As a marketing minor, I thought I understood the marketing beast (even though the Husband did complete most of my senior level marketing class homework...let's be honest...I had no business being in that class) but, lately, I've been confounded by what seems to be a widely accepted form of guerrilla marketing here in the Kansas City metro area: the costumed street stander.

It all started last summer. I was driving home when out of the corner of my eye, I saw what appeared to be a woman wearing a banana costume on the side of the street. Thinking this was surely a mirage, I did a slow drive-by and confirmed that it definitely was a woman in a banana costume. She was holding a sign advertising the crazy (hence "bananas") low prices of the produce at a nearby grocery store. Naturally, my first thought was: how many bananas must this grocery store sell in order to pay for a banana costume? I called the Husband immediately to report the banana lady sighting and, of course, he didn't believe me. I recall his exact words were: "There's no way there's a woman in a banana costume on the street. You are making that up." I knew I needed proof so I pulled a U-turn and did another drive-by with my camera poised and ready to capture a photo of the banana lady and capture it I did.


A few weeks later, I was cruising around when I spotted a person in a chicken costume holding a sign that read: Eat at Granny's. I have no idea if Granny's specializes in chicken or if the chicken costume was the only one on sale at Marvin's Costume Emporium. From the menacing glare of the chicken, I took his message to be more of a command than a suggestion. For the record: I did not eat at Granny's nor do I have any plans to eat at Granny's, menacing chicken or not.


Apparently this trend of employing costumed characters to inform Kansas' traveling public of low prices on bananas, generally irritated non-water fowl and other products is not limited to the summer months. As tax season rolls around, Liberty Tax has taken to employing individuals to don crudely constructed Statue of Liberty regalia and wave to passersby on the street. No matter the temperatures, these Lady Liberty impersonators brave the elements to let us know that Liberty Tax wants so badly to do our taxes that they will pay people minimum wage to dress in drag on street corners. My particular favorite Liberty Tax guy wears a black ski mask and doesn't wave. I'm actually not sure if he was hired by Liberty Tax or if he just held up the liquor store on the corner and is trying to blend in with his surroundings to evade police. Curious.

And just this week I was making my way to the dentist's office when I pulled up to a stop light and witnessed a Liberty Tax guy engaged in some seriously risque dancing on the street corner. Had the Infant been in the car with me I would have shielded his eyes to protect his innocence. There was so much gyrating and pelvic thrusting, I had to wonder if he could be cited for conduct unbecoming of a national symbol. Had I not known about Liberty Tax's costumed campaign, I may have thought this individual was selling something far more salacious than tax services.

I cannot help but wonder how many people are persuaded to buy bananas, eat at Granny's or get their taxes done by Liberty Tax because one of these costumed crusaders convinced them to do so. And this practice seems so pervasive that I wonder if maybe I missed something in a Marketing 101 class that predicted that all marketing roads would lead to costume marketing. I may as well have gotten an online degree.

The hills of Kansas

I know what you're thinking: "Hills? Kansas? Such things do not exist." But I am here to tell you that they do exist and we just so happen to live on one. Typically, this wouldn't be worth mentioning; however, when a wintry mix descends upon us from the heavens, as it is today, the trials and tribulations of having an incredibly steep driveway make themselves all too present.

So, this morning started off like few mornings have since the arrival of the Infant. The little nugget didn't wake up until 8:45am. Don't think I didn't take advantage of that and catch a few extra zzz's myself because I did. Now, I did go in and check on him several times to make sure he was still breathing (he was) but even sleeping in until 7:45 beat the heck out of the 5:45 wakings earlier this week but that is neither here nor there.

Upon waking this fine Friday morning, I see that it is indeed snowing but the ground is barely covered. I needed to run a few quick errands and had a limited amount of time before the Infant would need to return to his sleeping quarters. From my window the roads (meaning the one in front of my house) looked fine so I packed up the Infant and headed out into the snowy abyss.

My first indication that this might not have been a good idea was when I pulled out of the driveway and proceeded to slide down the rest of the hill in my vehicle, blowing through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. We didn't T-bone anyone so I breathed a sigh of relief. I parred down the errand list and didn't stray far from home. Upon returning to the homestead it had snowed at least four inches and the driveway was covered. I proceeded to do what I always do when the driveway is covered in snow: rev the engine and try to make it into the garage without hitting the house. I got about half-way to the top before spinning the tires and slowing sliding backwards. Undeterred, I backed up, trying to get a running start, and attempted the climb again...and again...and again. At one point, I was completely sideways. I felt a little like Austin Powers when he tries to turn that people-mover cart around in a small hallway. Finally, after a good half dozen attempts I decided that maybe shoveling a path for each tire would be all I needed to get up the hill. I parked on the street, left the Infant in the car listening to NPR and began to shovel. In record time, I had semi-cleared two tire paths and topped them off with salt. I returned to the car and backed up the hill to get enough speed to make it up the driveway and wouldn't you know it: I made it half-way up and slid all the way back down AGAIN. All that physical exertion for nothing! Finally, I threw in the towel, parked on the street, unpacked the Infant and trudged up the driveway on foot.

I knew what had to be done: total driveway snow removal. I put the Infant down for a nap and bundled up in my winter woolies. It was me v. the driveway and this time, I would emerge victorious even if it resulted in another herniated disc. It was still snowing but if I didn't take charge now, it would just get worse. I started at the top and shoveled and shoveled and shoveled. After all of my shoveling, this is what my driveway looked like:

CRIPPES!

I realize that tomorrow I might not be able to lift my arms and will probably hobble around holding my back like a little old lady. I blame all of these shenanigans on the hills of Kansas.

Clean carpets

After several months of intending to get our carpets cleaned, I finally made it happen earlier this week. When we moved into the house last February the off-white carpets looked fairly decent but two of the bathrooms are carpeted (what is up with that? Almost every house we looked at when we were in the market to purchase had carpeted bathrooms.) and I found that incredibly repulsive. Bathroom floors should be constructed out of something that can be doused in powerful chemicals to remove any traces of human DNA in any form like a nice tile or perhaps even a laminate, but carpet? I don't even want to know what lurks in the fibrous material that blankets the floor of our upstairs bathrooms. I get the willies just thinking about it. Bleh.

While the carpeted bathrooms had me keeping my gag reflex in check since we bought the place, I didn't think about the rest of the house until the Infant became mobile. The knees and sleeves of his clothes would end up covered with an ugly brown film after a day of taking laps around the house. As if this weren't enough to motivate me to get a carpet cleaner on the horn, the final straw came when I examined the Infant's feet while he was jumping in his Johnny Jump-up. The kid had "fair feet". Let me explain:

When I was but a young lass, my siblings and I would show our animals at the Rockingham County Fair every year in late August. (If you are unfamiliar with what "showing" animals means, it means you and a bunch of other people with the same breed of animal stand in a ring while an expert in that particular breed judges your animal and decides who's animal has the best characteristics of the breed. It's like a beauty pageant for cows, pigs and sheep and it is awesome.) We usually showed sheep and Jersey cows which meant we had a spot or two in the dairy barns for our cows to eat, sleep and chew their cud for the week of the fair. There were many other families that also housed their dairy cows in the dairy barn including the May sisters. The girls were older than us and had about a dozen dairy cows they brought with them to the fair. Unlike me, they were true farm girls. They slept with their cows, didn't mind being dirty and walked around barefooted. Even as a youngster, I was completely repulsed that these girls would traipse about the manure covered floors and washing stations without so much as a flip-flop on their feet. As you can imagine, their feet seemed to be permanently stained black and I can only imagine that one swab from those tootsies transferred to a petri dish would yield all kinds of colorful bacteria. From that point on, we referred to dirty feet as "fair feet". And this is what my child's feet looked like. I could no longer stand idly by while the Infant's feet became a hot, dirty mess in my own home.

So, I did some research, asked around and settled on a local carpet cleaner that promised to restore my carpets to an almost-new finish. On Monday, the carpet cleaning gentleman showed up with a bevy of tools and chemicals to blast the stains out of carpet. As you may know, I'm a big fan of chemicals. I even have a shirt that reads: I ♥ Chemicals. It's a bold statement but one I believe in. I was hoping that my home would be filled with a nice clean chemical smell but I was disappointed when it ended up smelling like the soap one may use at a do-it-yourself car wash. You know what I'm talking about, the pink stuff that looks good enough to eat but smells kind of like a public restroom. Luckily, the smell dissipated within a day.

When the carpet guy was finished, I took a look around and was thoroughly impressed with the results. Nary a stain was visible and I wanted to hug the guy but thought that might be awkward since we'd just met a few hours before. I sat down on the floor with the Infant telling him how great crawling around would be from this point forward because he wouldn't have fair feet anymore and his clothes wouldn't be covered in filth. Apparently unimpressed by the cleanliness of our home or maybe because he felt more comfortable in the filth, the Infant proceeded to spit up on my newly cleaned carpets. Sigh.

And we're walking...

The Infant is now a walking (with assistance) machine. He cannot be stopped. We can only hope to contain him.

The surprise

I have a confession to make: I think I might be a jerk. After careful deliberation, I've concluded that, given the evidence, a jury of my peers would find me to be of the jerky variety. This revelation has been quite disturbing since I consider myself a relatively nice person and believed that others thought the same thing. Oh, and to make matters worse, despite what I thought last week, my husband is not the least bit jerkish and tolerated my snarkiness for a whole week only to reveal that he was indeed, awesome. Let me give you the back story:

A few months ago it was decided that the husband and I would indeed exchange Christmas gifts. Sometimes we take a trip and call that our gift to each other or we gift each other with something for the house but this year I thought we should do gifts. The husband and I discussed this and agreed on the gift giving venture. I busied myself with securing a sweet gift or two for him and assumed he was doing the same.

So, Christmas rolls around and Benny K opens his gifts from me and is delighted which is the best part because I really hoped he'd like what I'd selected and he did not disappoint; however, look as I may (oh, and I DID look), I couldn't find a single gift that read: "To: Alise, From: Your loving husband." When this was brought to his attention, he claimed he didn't know we were exchanging gifts which made me want to wallop him a good one and then he claimed he completely dropped the ball and didn't get me anything. To say I was saddened and mildly annoyed would be an understatement. I couldn't believe that after six years of marriage, my unbelievably awesome-at-giving-incredibly-thoughtful-gifts husband had become a complete dud of a gift giver and I was not shy about bringing this to his attention. I'm pretty sure at some point I said things like: "It's not so much that you didn't get me a gift, it's that you didn't even THINK of getting me a gift" and "I guess I'll just have to get myself something" and the doosey: "This is unacceptable and I just want you to know that we will not be continuing this pattern in the future." I was not interested in hiding my displeasure and I certainly wasn't holding much back. Secretly, because I know what an awesome gift giver he typically is, I kept thinking surely he was kidding and there was a surprise right around the corner. New Years came and went and still nothing. I realized I had to let it go. Hope may win you a presidency but not a Christmas gift doth it bring.

So, we returned to Kansas (which welcomed us home with 9 degree temps and seven inches of snow and ice) late Saturday night and everything was normal and then Sunday morning, I went down to the basement to fire up the tele to watch The Soup and when I turned around I saw it: someone had broken into our home and done a complete room makeover on my creative space. In what used to be my chaotic sewing/craft room was order, organizers, a ribbon holder, shelves, plastic tubs, a thread organizer and a new embroidery sewing machine with a big red bow on it. As it turns out, it wasn't a B&E, but it was the husband who spent the week before Christmas building two new built-in desks, a cutting table, a sign that reads "Jean Jacket Fridays" (my fledgling creative label), building shelves, painting and making many trips to JoAnn Fabrics and Home Depot. He also enlisted several co-workers and friends to help him pull off the surprise. I had been longing to organize that room since we moved and dreaded going in there because it the disorganization was mind-numbing but devoting more than 15 minutes to a project isn't so easy to do with the Infant lurking at the bottom of every staircase and sticking every electrical cord in his little mouth. And here it was, the room of my dreams which the husband kept concealed for more than a week to let me discover it on my own all the while enduring several serious tongue lashings from yours truly.

I did feel mildly guilty for chastising him all week for his lack of Christmas gift but at the time, I thought he was totally deserving. Hindsight is a kicker.

BEFORE: The husband actually cleaned out the room (thank goodness) before taking the before picture but this gives a good idea of what he was working with.

AFTER: Here she is in all her glory!

My first project: the embroidery sewing machine is nothing short of awesome. It threads itself, cuts the thread for me and does about 60 different stitches. It is everything I've always dreamed about having in a sewing machine and yes, I dream about those things.