Month: October 2018

the.foundation.

There’s a little street I usually run down when life affords me the opportunity to do so. I’m not sure if I run down this street because it is a reasonable path to where I want to end up, or if it’s because there are two houses on that street in which I made fond memories as a young person. But at any rate, I run down this street 2-3 times a week.

For the last year or so, on this street, there has been a giant empty lot for sale. I don’t know how much it was selling for, I’m not sure who owned the land. I just know it was for sale for a very long time.

Then suddenly, a couple weeks ago, the For Sale sign was gone. The week after, a foundation was laid. Right in the middle of all this green, sprawling grass.

A foundation.

I slowed to a walk as I passed, inspecting it. The lot is not huge, but the foundation seemed so small, so insignificant. Just this slab of concrete. I walked more slowly.

What kind of house can be built on such a small slab?

Who would buy this big lot and lay down this tiny foundation?

There isn’t even going to be a basement?!!? What kind of house will this be? 

All thoughts I had as I strolled by, staring at this new development on what I’d started to consider my street (even though I live nowhere near it). I picked up my pace and finished my run, not thinking about it again until the next week.

When I ran by this lot again and… the frame was up.

An entire frame for an entire house. It was all there, already, standing firm on this foundation. I could see where a living room could go, a bedroom. A kitchen. I could see where there was room for a bathroom and a hallway. Maybe even a pantry. Once the lines had been drawn, the frame erected, it was easy to see that this foundation had been big enough for a house all this time. I just hadn’t seen it.

Foundations can be funny like that.

black.thumb.

pumpkins

 

It’s October. I wish I had better news for you, but… I don’t. It’s October and it’s almost Halloween and I have killed my pumpkin plant.

If you know me, you are now thinking, why in the hell did you think you could grow a pumpkin?

Well, let me tell you: I didn’t.

The pumpkin plant sprouted spontaneously from the ground with no help from me, save for my laziness last year as the kids and I were gutting our lovely pumpkins in the front yard and chucking the guts into the flower bed (okay yeah yeah, flower bed is too strong a phrase for the shit going on in my front yard). It started small and vine-y and my husband did not believe me when I shouted, “It’s a pumpkin vine! It’s going to be a pumpkin!” But then it got longer and bigger and started to flower and there was no denying: We were going to have our very own pumpkins this year.

Now, again… if you know me well, you know how delusional this was for me to think. After all, I’ve killed the following plants in the last couple of years:

  1. An Aloe plant I was told was very hearty and healthy and nearly impossible to kill
  2. More than one cactus – that’s right folks, living with me is harsher than living in a fucking desert
  3. Two hanging plants that hung on and really gave a good fight all summer but are now dead
  4. Various amounts of hearty mums
  5. Two potted plants that honestly, I don’t even know the names of. They have, like, really dark green slippery looking leaves but no flowers? I don’t know, but they’re dead, too.

 

And now, the pumpkin plant.

So I guess it’s off to the market for me to buy stupid pumpkins some other person was able to successfully grow without killing because they’re better caretakers than a sandy, hot, emotionless void. Like they’re so special or something.