The weekend started on a bit of a low note - we finally received our tax returns.
Talk about demoralizing. And I'm not talking about the taxes; those came in about as expected. What was so depressing was seeing the final tally of my income for the year. I had a rough idea of what I made, but I just didn't have the stomach to actually add it up before everything went off to the accountant. Now I was staring at it in stark black and white. Feeling masochistic, I whipped out a calculator to determine just how far I'd fallen and figure out what percentage of my 2007 income I was now making. And the gruesome answer?
25%.
I should have just skipped college and gotten a job at McDonalds. I'd be middle management by now.
The boyfriend fared better than I. He's making close to half what he once made. But all told, it cast a horrible pall over our weekend. We needed something to take our mind off our financial troubles and decided the best answer was...
Agressive yard work.
And I mean aggressive... we broke out the chainsaw.
I know what you're thinking... two gay men and a chainsaw, there's something you don't see every day.
We actually bought it when we bought our house in LA. We had one large, somewhat mangy tree, dead center in our backyard. All it really needed was a trim, but in those first few months, we were house poor and so we couldn't really afford a professional trimmer. But how hard could it be? We'd do it ourselves.
I was up on a ladder, wielding our new chainsaw. The boyfriend was down below, art directing. There was a steeper learning curve than I had imagined with the chainsaw. Wrong limbs cut, or cut too short. Cutting through one limb and accidentally nailing the one behind too. Eventually, I got the hang of it, but it was too late. The tree looked like a celery stalk.
It would grow back, we said. In time, it would grow back. But it was truly awful to look at and we didn't have the patience. The following weekend we used our new chainsaw to cut it down at base and covered the stump with a potted plant.
This time would be different, we'd learned from our mistakes. Or so I thought.
Initially, it went well. We trimmed several trees with the lightest of touch. But then I handed off the chainsaw to the boyfriend as I went to tend to my weed garden.
The first sign of trouble was the trees on the side of the house. Four smallish trees spaced out down the side yard. We had thought they might actually be dead when we bought the house, since they had no vegetation and seemed somewhat brittle. But it was winter and they were only dormant and over the past couple of weeks they had started to bloom.
Well, they're dead now.
"Looks better, dontcha think?" I heard the boyfriend say behind me.
I turned around to see the four tree carcasses piled on the sidewalk. It did actually look better, and it certainly makes my job of mowing the lawn that much easier. Still, it seemed a little brutal.
Next, he decided to "trim" the juniper on the corner of the property. The juniper is large and old and hasn't been tended to in probably 30 years. The lush greenery on top covered an impossible tangle of gnarled roots and twisted branches. He was just going to "clean it up". He pointed down the street to a neighbor's juniper, one that had lovingly been trimmed, probably for years, into an elegant bonzai shape. That was his goal.
I went back to my weeds and I heard the chainsaw ripping through branches. After about a half an hour I went to check on his progress.
It looked like a truck had plowed into the juniper.
He had given it his best shot, but it was clear this was going to have to be the job of a professional. I could tell he was disappointed, and I promised him we'd get someone out to fix it.
It was about at that time that Jim crossed the street, cocktail in hand. He invited us over for afternoon drinks with his gay father and other neighbors, and we said "sure, why not".
So as the sun set, we joined about a half dozen of our new neighbors for strong drinks and conversation. The main topic was one of our other neighbors, who wasn't there. An older man who lives about five house down. He owns quite a bit of rental property in Bako and had a penchant for renting to young women and single moms. When times got tough, he graciously offered to accept sex in lieu of rent. And he recently got caught. As if that isn't bad enough, his immediate next door neighbor is the District Attorney. AWKWARD.
We really had a lovely time and it certainly ended the weekend on an up note. It turns out quite few of our neighbors have something in common...
They all work at WalMart.
That will come in handy.
I should have an "in" when I eventually apply for a job. Because, after looking over my tax returns, I'm afraid it's just a matter of time.
