I have no idea what to do with myself now that I have free time.

Saturday afternoon, I wandered around the house in an aimless fog.  I kept feeling like I was missing something, kept suspecting that there was something, and something large, that I was forgetting.  I must’ve called everyone in my phone book looking for someone who could provide an answer to the question: what am I supposed to be doing? It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that I realized the problem was that I was looking for ‘have to’ and not ‘want to.’  I have officially entered into a very strange, very temporary period of my life when I can do whatever I want to do with my free time.  And it is freaking me out. I’m feeling tragically anxious, to say the least.

As it stands, what “I want to do” isn’t quite what I thought it would be.  Although Saturday I opted to get my eyebrows waxed, cook, and watch a comic book movie, on Sunday I cleaned out the front flowerbed.  Who in their right mind spends their first weekend of scholastic freedom pulling weeds?  Old people, that’s who.  And apparently, I am old.  I am a bonafide senior citizen who spends her weekends in the yard, muttering under her breath about the damn weeds and how she’s never going to be able to stay on top of them.  I guess the main difference between me and my grandma is that I’m fairly sure that my grandma gardens in such a way that never results in her finding leaves in her underwear during her evening shower.

I didn’t really mean to start gardening.  I was outside sitting on the front stoop of the house on the phone with my friend Betsy, and I pulled a milkweed.  I’m not very good at being idle.  I have to move all the time.  We wound up talking for the better part of an hour, so by the time we hung up the phone, I had worked over 8 feet of the front flowerbed that runs the length of the house.  I decided, hey I’m just going to go for this.  Nevermind that I don’t own gloves, or any gardening tools for that matter.  Not a big deal in the end.  Over 3 hours later Me, my hedge trimmers and I had created a 4′ tall pile of weeds, trimmings and grass that I pulled from the front flower bed.  Also, I was covered in dirt.  My hands were caked in mud, my knees and feet were covered in dirt and muck, and (as I mentioned earlier) I had leaves in…. places. Ahem.  Sunday night, even after a long shower wherein I tried to remove all the mud from my body, Zack found mud in both of my ears.  Staying classy.

I love being old.  Working in the yard really suites me.  For example, I’m going home tonight to tie a Yucca Plant to my car’s hitch and see if I can’t uproot that annoying plant once and for all.  I guess that’s not really ‘gardening,’ though, as much as it’s ‘XTREME GARDENING.’  So maybe I’m not 70.  Maybe I’m 50 and desperately clinging to my youth.  I can totally handle that.