~ If You Give A Mama An Auger ~

If you have learned anything at all about me in the past three years, dear friends, it is that I have no ability to rein it in. None. I couldn’t find the definition of moderation if you shoved the dictionary under my nose.

Give me a bag of chocolate, you end up with an empty bag.

Ask me to clean a bench, you end up with a sandblasted, primed, and painted polka dot piece of furniture.

Ask me to save a feral kitten, you end up saving a boatload of them.

Give me an auger drill bit to plant a tulip bulb in the fall….

and you end up with a thousand (yes, that’s accurate…a full 1,000) tulips blooming in the spring.

No, seriously. A Thousand. Several trips to Lowes, several re-budgeting for this years’ landscaping, several husband eye-rolls later, you’ve got yourself a thousand freaking tulips.

Why?! Why, you ask?

Is it because I relish the idea of publicly prancing around in my 3X unapologetically purple Schmidt Work Overalls from The Tractor Supply Company?

Do I have a fetish of waving my ample arse in the air to passing cars while drilling over 1,000 holes in the tough Maryland clay?

Am I hell bent on embarrassing my family with my weird antics?

Look, I’m not going to straight out deny any of those things, but to be honest, I actually DO have an honorable reason!

You see, my father taught me that beauty matters. What we are surrounded with matters. It all affects us. I know how different I feel when the kitchen is full of dirty dishes, and when it’s clean and orderly. The place we live gives us a sense of stress, or well-being, depending on how it is set up.

I don’t know about you guys, but I can control very little in this world. And since all this required was an auger drill bit, some bags of tulip bulbs, and a decent chiropractor (Thank you, Dr. Spiro Theodore!) I figured I could have an impact here. Few things in life can we impact with such obvious results!“You have too much time on your hands,” quipped one rather pessimistic friend of mine.

My response? Well, I don’t watch television. Not like, a little bit…I mean I don’t watch television. I haven’t had cable television in nearly 20 years! So since I’m not drooling passively on the couch in front of the boob tube, I have time to paint benches, and blog, and plant tulips! It’s all about choices and priorities, I guess. And from what I’ve heard about Honey Boo Boo, and vampire or zombie series, I’m okay with my choices!Besides, when you have no ability to moderate your chocolate intake, it’s a good thing to be outside digging and mulching!