Month: April 2019

The line cutter

Posted on by backuphill

group of people walking near clear glass window with a view of white airplane parked during daytime

Photo by Tim Gouw on Pexels.com

Yo, dude, never mind me. I wasn’t standing here, in line, waiting my turn like a civilized person.

Ever had that happen to you? Of course you have. I am sure it happens way more often than you’d like, in fact. Because, you know, the people who read this blog are all rational and intelligent people who like order.

In the last week, it has happened at Starbucks and Home Depot. Minding my own business, waiting patiently for my turn in line, when some jackwagon walks up and jumps in line without looking to see if there were people in line. Yes, lady, we’re all just standing here for our health.

Confession time…about a month ago, I was that jackwagon. It was totally not on purpose though and I apologized PROFUSELY when I discovered that I had jumped in line in front of people who were waiting. It was at the grocery store and they were standing in an aisle waiting for the register to open up (in my defense, they were more than 8 feet away). I looked. It didn’t appear at first glance that people were waiting, so I jumped in line. Only as I got started on the self-checkout that the lady standing in the front of the line in the aisle came to start her self-checkout did I realize that there had been a line. She was gracious and didn’t curse me out, but good grief did I feel bad.

The Starbucks lady? She didn’t feel bad at all. I guess her overwhelming need for that frappe just overrode her sense of common decency and humanity. The guy at Home Depot? Yeah, no such remorse from him either. He just dragged the store associate to another aisle and took his sweet time asking questions while the rest of us waited for the associate to come back.

So, in conclusion, let’s all slow down a little today and take it easy. Nothing is really that important. Be courteous. Be kind. Be patient. Be polite.

Be in line.

Like mowing rocks

Posted on by backuphill

douglas-fir-cones_1024x1024

Up here in the PNW we have trees. Lots of them. They’re everywhere. Well, mostly everywhere. There are places that have a shortage of trees, but don’t feel sorry for them. Feel sorry for me. Please. Like right now. Feel it.

Right now I would like to cut down all my trees. I don’t really need them and I don’t really have a use for them. They’re really more of a pain really.

I think I have talked about one aspect of the pain on the blog already, pine needles. I think I also mentioned in another post about trees and their freaking leaves falling in the yard too. BUT there is another aspect of pain that I haven’t yet mentioned when it comes to my trees.

Pine cones.

No, not the great big ones with pokey things on them that smell like cinnamon that you can buy at Michael’s or Hobby Lobby or JoAnn Fabrics during Christmas time. While I am sure those are an issue for someone somewhere, they aren’t my issue.

My pine cones are from the Douglas Fir trees in the yard. (see the photo at the top) These stupid trees produce (seemingly) millions of pine cones every year and then during the winter months they shed them all over my freaking yard. When spring comes and it is time to mow the yard, these pine cones are in varying degrees of opening (so some are “soft” – meaning opened, and some are hard as rocks because they are wet and closed).

It takes time to pick these things up, bent over for hours scouring the ground to find them all (used to bride the kids to do it for money – one year they picked up 40 gallons [8 5-gallon buckets] of them). The kids are old enough now they aren’t going to fall for Dollar Store trinkets any longer.

So, rather than pick them up this year, I just decided to try and mow over them. Oh man the racket!! It was like mowing rocks.

So, between the pine needles and pine cones and sap from some of the trees, and falling leaves from some of the other trees, and moss all over the yard – yeah, this place is a modern day paradise for landscaping nightmares.

#smh