Ying and Yang Weekend

One of my favorite things is starting Monday knowing that our household had a fun and productive weekend. This weekend we set ourselves to complete just one task: getting rid of the Amazon jungle in our back yard.

Every time we opened the back yard door, Izzy and Shaker would make a run for the jungle where they would get lost for hours exploring. It was cute seeing their little heads poke out from the massive weeds when I called out for them. 

So the jungle was fun for the dogs, and actually some of the weeds were pretty too (my opinion..Rossy didn’t think any of it was pretty)...

...but, all in all, the Amazon jungle had to go; it made our house look trashy. And it was also attracting a massive amount of weird looking bugs, that often ended up in the dogs beards

Starting to weed at 11 am during the summer in Houston is a mistake. Yes, I procrastinated by cooking breakfast (which we normally don’t do…), petting Izzy and Shaker a little extra than normal, and trying to find anything else that would hold me back from starting the dreadful task. And oh how I paid for our mistake. I was able to pull around 3ftx5ft of weeds (which is about 1% of what we had to pull out) before I started to feel sickishly hot. I wish I would have had paid more attention at the heat stroke/stress training at work, because I definitely think I had the full blown symptoms for one of them. And then what did I do? I drank a bud light lime. Not a smart choice as Ross pointed out various times when he discovered what I was drinking underneath the canopy. Stupid, but delicious. The citrus, and chill from the beer was amazing; it went down quick. But just so that I wouldn’t piss off Rossy anymore, I switched to water. Which although not as exciting as the beer, it was refreshing and it felt right; my body definitely needed the water.

Ross starting pulling weeds later than me since he mowed the front yard first, and in less than 1 hour he had cleared half the yard. So Me: cleared 1% of the yard in 1.5 hours, Ross: cleared 50% in less than 1 hour. I guess I was just not meant for physically demanding work. As I told Ross, I was meant to drink beer underneath the canopy… "Insert here dirty look from Ross”. Tasks like these remind me of how grateful I should be of my job. How can people work in this heat?

Just last week at work, I was admiring how hard a crew was working at 1 pm, 94F, pouring concrete to make a slab where my project would be erected at. These men were incredible. I watched part of the crew carefully walk and balance themselves on the rebar support, where one wrong step meant ending up with rebar in between their legs (and probably ending up sterile). Luckily none of that happened. Then, they grabbed a giant hose that was hovering over their heads and pulled it down into the gap below them until it got filled up in its entirety with concrete. The other crew did the hard part. Their job was to level out the poured concrete with a rudimentary wooden plank. Two of the guys pulled and pushed each end of the wooden plank, trying to carefully even out the surface just like you would even out icing on a cake. Then another crew stuck vibrators into the concrete to get rid of any air pockets. And all this with while wearing long sleeve flame retardant clothing (FRC), clothes underneath the FRC (well..some of them probably went commando), a hard hat, knee high rubber boots, and gloves that were duct tapped to the wrist of their FRC. They all worked in sync and by the end of the working day, they were done. No one complained, no one took excessive breaks, and no one had a bad attitude. Truly an admirable crew. And I "supervised" the whole operation under a piece of shade that I luckily found, and I was exhausted.  So lame. 

So what did I do next? Embarrassed over my lack of endurance, I got up from my ass and started weeding again. Unfortunately, ½ hour later I was again feeling the probable symptoms of a heat stroke or stress. How do these men do it? Even Ross gave up. After extending our break several times, we decided to call it quits at 2 pm.  Struggling with defeat, we promised ourselves several times in between gulps of water that Sunday we would wake up at the crack of dawn and finish the job (yeah right..).

Since I felt pretty guilty that we were not able to finish the project (and extremely lame), I decided to start another project. After a delicious veggie and guac. Burger, I proceeded to empty the whole closet and organize. It’s a love/hate chore for me. On the one hand, I love re-discovering clothes that I thought had gone missing but had just been buried in between folded piles; it’s almost like I bought new clothes! On the other hand, I hate folding and stacking everything neatly again, which I usually do in between sneezes and grunts. Apparently I am allergic to this chore. After I folded and tucked away all my winter clothes in bags underneath the guest bed, it was awesome and surprising to find that I had a lot of more room in the closet than what I had anticipated. Extra space in the closet can only mean one thing for a girl…time for a shopping trip!

As Sunday rolled in upon us, we did manage to get up “early”  -however, not the crack of dawn- at 8:30 am, and this time we did not procrastinate one single minute. In a matter of 3 hours or so we managed to pull out the rest of the weeds, and apply weed killer all around the area. The challenge next weekend (or maybe the one after next  )? Fill up the area with soil and sod. I truly can’t wait until our back yard looks normal again. And I am looking forward to another Monday where I am just smiling and feeling good because I had a productive weekend. Weekends in which we solely party are fun, but I truly believe that a balance of partying and work is necessary for a healthy lifestyle; very in tune with the Yin Yang concept. Opposites only exist in relation to each other; for me partying is a complimentary opposite to work, a duality that when maintained in balance, keeps the psyche in good shape. Sunday evening we decided to make sure we kept our work/party balance in check by heading to Bixx bar on Washington Ave. for some crawfish. Crawfish season is coming to an end, and I am still craving it. I have eaten crawfish at least 8 times this season and I am still not ready to give it up until next year. So before the season ended, I really wanted to overdose myself with crawfish -up until an unhealthy point- just so that I could wave a satisfied farewell to crawfish season, kick all those mud bugs in their butts, happy not to see them again until next year. And that is exactly what I did. Bye bye mud bugs..until next year! A satisfied farewell.  It was a great closure to a productive and fun weekend, one which I hope I will remember and continue to emulate in future weekends.

Here is our weekend photo dump. Notice my face after eating crawfish  I walked all over the grocery with that face (thanks Rossy for NOT telling me...this will be remembered). No wonder I got such weird looks…