Weekend Recap, Suburban Style

This weekend, a first in many recent weekends, belonged to Wendy and me. Exclusively ours to do whatever we decided needing doing---including nothing, should we so deem.

I secretly hoped we’d deem at least one weekend morning worthy of doing nothing. Mornings are for laying about after all, as are evenings to a great extent. Afternoons and afternoons alone are for exertion. Unless it’s football season. When it’s football season morning and afternoons flip flop on Sundays. But it’s not, so they don’t.

Our weekend began with Friday night. A craving for chocolate had been hounding me all day. Literally all day. I baked a pan of brownies. The box recommends letting them cool for one hour to ensure ease of extraction from the pan. I showed great restraint by waiting 30 minutes.

(They’ll be gone before I go to bed Sunday evening.
I’m a glutton that way.
Just so you know.)

Saturday I played bed slug. Wendy brought me coffee. I fell back asleep and my coffee got cold. Wendy brought fresh hot coffee. I sipped it while eating a brownie and watching Sports Center. Wendy decided to mow the lawn. I watched some cheesy movie on TNT or some such like. I think it was called “Blood Surf” or something equally as enticing. It was about this 30 foot long giant man-eating crocodile. Everyone in the movie got eaten one by one until just a hero and heroine were left. They killed the croc and made love in the surf. Oh yeah baby.

I started feeling a tiny bit guilty about being so indulgently lazy, so decided to get up and do some work in the yard myself. There are several bushes/trees in the yard that need to taken down. (What do you call something that is like a tree but also like a bush? Trush? Bree?) I got it in my head to start taking down a holly bree in the front yard. I ate another brownie and got to work with my granddaddy’s pole saw. Soon all that was left was a humongous pile of pruned branches and the twelve foot tall eight inch diameter holly bree stump.

Wendy and I surveyed the situation.
“We need a chain saw,” I stated the obvious.
Wendy said “Tomorrow.”

Ah! The Alexandria Waterfront Festival. I’d forgotten we were meeting friends there for the evening. We showered and dressed. I ate a brownie and we hit the road.

One friend showed up wearing fake hair in a ponytail, which is odd yet entertaining in its own special way. The evening was beautiful. We could have indulged in an advertised culinary delight called “crab cake in a crepe” but we decided on a pulled pork sammich and some fresh cut fries. I mean really. Crab cake in a crepe? Pul-lease. That’s just not done in the civilized world.

We set up not far from a beer truck to watch the bands. Alexandria is a great city in which to attend a festival. The shuttles run on time, trash cans are emptied regularly and there is Purell in every port-a-potty. Do I need to get out more or has Purell been a fixture in port-a-potties for a while? Either way, it rocks. Totally.

We arrived home a little before midnight. I had a beer and a brownie and headed for bed.

Sunday we got ourselves a chainsaw and finished off the holly bree. We bundled the debris and stacked it by the curb. Wendy and I eyed the cedar trush at the corner of the house. It was huge. Taller than the house. It so needed to be gone. So it was said, so it was done. Said trush now resides neatly bundled at the curb awaiting Wednesday's designated yard debris pickup. Little by little we are taking charge of our landscape.

Which brings us to Sunday evening. Right this minute. Wendy and I are sitting side by side on the screened porch. Cans of cold cheap beer are open at our elbows. We survey our corner of suburbia, our eyes comforted. Green makes everything gorgeous. The breeze wafts across us and we enjoy the sound of the wind through the trees, a gentle rustle as soft and silky as Faith Hill in her “Breathe” video as she writhes naked on satin sheets.

Wendy says “This feels like being on vacation.”
I have to agree.

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