Shitbag

I am beginning to understand why gardening is popular with older people. Nutz-deep in the planning process for what will be our new front yard, it seems obvious to me that the amount of patience and foresight required does not cater to the young and their need for immediate gratification. Working from bed with colored pencils, paper and a perennials catalog, I am taking a painter’s approach, organizing color, height, sun/shade preferences, bloom cycles… and none of it may necessarily take. Things die, things refuse to grow in certain soil, drought happens, floods and hail come, etc. I should have a solid idea of what’s working by, say, 2015.

I fear Stan has succumbed to a Spring depression. He spends many hours of the day curled on the bath mat in front of the shower. I have no idea why. When I attempt to engage him in a conversation he gives me the ‘asshole’ look and waddles away to the bedroom rug. When I return to the bedroom to get back into bed, he gives me the ‘asshole’ look and goes back to the bathroom. He has always been a moody little fucker but this sort of behavior is wearing me down. It is true that my current condition has severely cut into his walking time; it is true that the carpenter bees, whom he fears terribly, have returned to the back deck, rendering the prospect of hitting the back yard for a leisurely deuce into a potentially traumatic experience. That said, I wonder when some of his old obstinacy might return. It pains me to see him this way.

I just strayed into the YouTube© to watch a gardening video. Big mistake: A series of crappy photos, featuring many of the plants that I have been considering for my yard, Ken Burns-ed over the most obnoxious Euro trash dance music, the kind of soundtrack you might expect to accompany the violation of Albanian minors. Goddamn it. I fear my arboreal aspirations have been forever smeared by some suburban hack’s lifestyle confusion. Like, seriously, what does this guy, this Manwininwrit, do every morning? Put on a spandex unitard, pop a Red Bull and head out back to urinate on the begonias? Get out of my head, shitbag.