Hola! Bonjour! Salut! Zdravo!

I registered at www.postcrossing.com. It’s a site that helps you swap postcards with people across the world.  I have high hopes that this will be a great summer geography lesson for the kids.  We’ll put up a world map on the wall, mark in one color the countries we receive from and another color the countries we send to.  We’ll look up the country on the internet and maybe even learn to say “hello” in their native language.  And we will do all of this with no whining or fussing or fighting over who got to put the dot last time and who’s turn it is to put the dot this time.  Yes, it will be a summer learning experience we will all enjoy!

Or it will follow a more realistic path of being really cool for the first three or four postcards and then quickly spiral into a tantrum laden episode of “Hey Mommy!  Isn’t it my turn this time?  Tell him it’s MY TURN!!! He did it last time!  I know he did!  Hey Mommy!!!”.  And all of that fun will last until Mike bellows ”If you don’t do something with all of these postcards, I’m going to throw them in the trash!”.

I think if I were a teacher and didn’t actually have to live with my kids and referee these arguments, this might be a really cool classroom project.  In any event, we have received our first 5 addresses to send postcards to.  Our mission tomorrow morning is to find postcards with some local flair to send off.  Oh my, I didn’t even consider the fun family bonding experience we’ll all have with a Saturday morning field trip to both the store that (I hope) sells postcards and also the post office to buy the postage for these internationally bound gems.  Gosh I’m glad I found that website.

On a very loosely related tangent, I’m also a member at www.paperbackswap.com and have been thoroughly enjoying it!  I’m a book addict and this is helping me resist the urge to buy the latest release every time I go to Wal-Mart or Target.  I also really love it because I’m able to swap audio books, too.    I just wish that people wanted my books as much as I want theirs.  I have boxes and stacks sitting here, staring at me every day, begging for me to send them off to someone.  Oh wait … no, that’s not the books … it’s Mike begging me to get rid of them!

Me (collector) + Him (purger) = Disharmony

Who knew there was a house behind all those bushes?

I have been sitting in my home office all day listening to the sounds of the landscapers hard at work rediscovering our once beautiful landscaping.  My feelings alternate between joy in the realization that soon the overgrown mess we used to call landscaping will, indeed, be true beautiful landscaping and then panic that tomorrow afternoon when they’re finished I will have to write a check for an amount that I am too embarassed to mention to pay for this revitalization.

In defense of the landscaper, he and his team are doing a great job and likely well worth the amount they’re charging.  However, I hate to write that check for something that I feel we could have done ourselves.  I know it would have taken us all summer and innumerable arguments to get through it ourselves … hmm … well maybe two days of hard work on their part is worth it after all.

We bought our home in November.  I had no idea what the landscaping would look like given that it was nearly winter.  When the spring came and the bushes and flowers bloomed, I was in awe of the beauty in our yard.  As it progresses into summer and then fall, I continued to be amazed at the thought that went into the landscape design.  It seemed as soon as one flower died, another bloomed.

This beauty lasted for about two years.  It did get a bit overgrown, but Mike bought an electric hedge trimmer and kept most of the bushes trimmed.  Until he somehow managed to cut the cord of the hedge trimmer with the hedge trimmer itself.  That initiated the “wild, overgrown bushes” look.

We weeded … sometimes … and it looked nice when we did.  Apparently Mike got tired of weeding because he had the grand idea of spraying weed killer on most of the planting beds to kill the weeds.  Why he thought the flowers would live through an overabundant shower of weed killer, I have no idea.  We lost the irises, some roses and some other beautiful flowers that I cannot even begin to name.  The weeds, however, were not deterred.

There were other landscaping mishaps along the way but these were the two big ones that led us to the OMG-its-going-to-cost-us-HOW-much?!?! date with the landscaper this week.  Mr. Landscaper assured me that we could have the bushes and plants maintained twice a year for about one sixth of the cost of this current affair and then we’d never get ourselves into this situation again.  I think maybe I should just keep the weed killer away from my husband … and invest in a gas powered hedge trimmer.