Middle-Aged Weekends

Excitement that's hard to handle.....

Last weekend, my list of things said something like:

• Install new mailbox post

• Get mulch and paint

• Spread mulch

• Trim trees so nobody gets decapitated while mowing.

The mailbox post had been leaning precariously for a while, and although it was on the weekend to-do list, it was frankly not high on the list until we had a very polite but pointed note from the Post Office saying that our mailbox was ‘too low’. Well yes, because it’s leaning at about 45 degrees and is held up with a small piece of twine tied to a hastily bashed-in bit of rebar. The Post Office was not wrong.

Bear in mind it has been well over 90 degrees in this part of the world, so taking out an old mailbox and installing a new one was not something I was wildly enthusiastic about.

But as I was out there digging (and digging), looking like I had just been swimming in a warm, muddy pond in all my clothes, my neighbor across the street drove her riding mower over to chat. I didn’t really have any actual breath left to chat, but could manage a few responsive grunts. And then my other neighbor came over as well and we had a perfectly nice 20 minutes out there, while I slowly died of heat exhaustion and they chatted away - one still on a mower, one not.

This weekend, my mailbox looks amazing (solid middle-aged accomplishment!). And I got to know my neighbors a bit better, borrowing a better ratcheting screwdriver from one of them to re-affix the actual mailbox. He also said that my mailbox now looks better than his, which of course, is all I could ever hope for in the middle-aged world of uber-competitive front yard rankings.

This weekend, the list includes doing some house-related paperwork stuff, getting office furniture, and I have yet to spread the mulch….

But I have also added, ‘watch movie in air-conditioning while drinking a martini’.

So there.

Let nobody say middle age isn’t jam-packed with thrills!

Photo by Mikaela Wiedenhoff on Unsplash