Something wonderful happened on Monday – betts* returned from Mexico. Oh the glory! I straight away stole her son for swimming and hot dogs. He loves him some hot dogs because his mother is a veggie eater. I guess that makes me the awesome mom and I can’t tell you how appreciative I am that betts* gives me that.

Today we relived old times by pulling weeds under the blow-torch that is a Tucson summer sun. Pull, chat, sweat. Pull, chat, sweat. Later Mr. Mechanical, who is still single ladies, showed up to pull weeds with us. The cathartic rhythm of the task at hand and the resultant feeling of tidy accomplishment set me straight for weeding possessions at home. We do need to make space for Landlady, who I still think shouldn’t move in with us nor force us to move out.

I took some bland snapshots that I am going to force you to endure. It may appear as though we pulled everything but the two birds of paradise, but we kept other stuff according to betts*’s aesthetic. She is, after all, a professional landscaper. Even so two birds were the order of the day as we also saw two house finches about four feet away from us as we worked.

At the top of the mound is a lovely little home for ants. We weeded the crap out of their abode and they didn’t like it. Nope, they didn’t. Not one bit. I swear it was all betts*’s doing as I totally identify with being uprooted by the powers that be, but the ants didn’t see it that way. Nope, they didn’t. As I innocently bagged the weeds upon project completion, those ants came after me. I guess I had a bit of a reaction.

I added the arrows since the 9 YO indicated that the non-swollen hand looked to him as bitten because my normal arthritic (not really) knuckles are so prominent. He also said the hand that had been bitten looked younger. Perhaps ant bites can be used in place of Botox?

I also have a huge blister on my index finger from pulling weeds without using gloves. That blister irritates me most of all because it’s at that spot where I turn locks, the car ignition, and the water faucets, but more importantly because I can’t get a good photo of the blister. The children have nicknamed the blister Fluffy and later thought the swollen knuckles should be called Puffy.