The last couple of days I actually got off my lazy butt and did something. Last week I decided that I would clean up my dad’s patio area as a project to do before I leave. My dad has a lot of plants and it has been ignored overgrown with weeds for several years. For some odd reason, as messy as I am, when it comes to other people’s messes, I like choosing the most messy thing and clean that up. I guess it’s because it’s the most rewarding. Anyways, I never had the motivation to start and the boys and knitting has kept me pretty well occupied.

Yesterday, my mom was home in the morning and was able to watch the boys so I started cleaning up. At first it was just light kind of stuff, pruning the plants, just trying to make a walkway. After a few minutes though, my dad decides to help out and we really got a lot done. In a couple of hours, you could actually walk across the patio. At that time, I looked at his hodge-podge of shelving - he has one decent plant table and the other two was rusted corrugated roofing put on concrete blocks. It was so messy and dangerous! He even had a rusted old bbq grill frame that he turned into a makeshift shelf. We laughed about it and then we got the idea to build two more work tables. It really doesn’t look that hard to make, should take us at most a day. With this renewed energy, we took all the plants out, threw away the old “stuff”, and cleaned it up really well so that you could actually see the stone patio. I don’t know when the last time was that we could see the stones. At one point he pointed up at the mesh cover and said “see this hole? I used to have my weber here.” And there was a perfectly round hole in the mesh material burnt off. He didn’t mean to be funny but I was laughing so hard. I just pictured my dad happily cooking away on his grill and then one day looking up and noticing a perfectly round hole. I’m still laughing at that one.

Then he said “geez, when you come home I have so much work to do”. Haha!

Most of the time I couldn’t tell what were real plants and what were weeds. When in doubt, it’s a weed. I threw so much away. But there are some plants that just went crazy and thrived in an “ignored” environment. One of them was orchids. Actually, the orchids weren’t thriving (no flowers), but they were still living. I think of that movie “secretary” where that guy had that special humid environment with the little spray misters that would mist them every few hours, and here my dad is ignoring them for how many years and they’re still living! He has a lot of nice plants that are still living so after we build those shelves, we will repot them all.

So yesterday was cleanup and idea day, and today was building day. My mom had the morning off again, so we worked on building the tables this morning. It was a comedy of errors and it had me laughing throughout the day. It’s amazing how slow things go when you’re just starting. We had so much energy to just start doing and not thinking about what we need, etc. My dad made a big speech yesterday about having a plan so that we know what we need. So he drew it up yesterday and we were ready.

Oh, but where are the hammers? Where is the safety goggles. Ok, start hammering. Wait, what size nails? Too long! This one? Ok. Where is that drill? Where did that tape measure go? Things of that nature. The first table was painstakingly slow to start. We had to do all the cutting first. I measured the line and my dad cut. He complained about my line not being straight, but you should’ve seen his cut. But whatever, it’s just for a plant table. I had to chuckle though. We assembled the legs and started on making the frame when we realize that it needed to be 3 inches narrower. Argh! We basically had to take it all apart and start from the beginning. We also realized that we needed to buy more wood and more nails. I asked him “what happened to the plan?” and he said “it’s in the house”. He totally cracked me up.

So, my dad went back to the hardware store and I went in to put the boys to bed. Now that we have an idea of what we’re doing and we have all the tools at our disposal, everything should be quick right? right? Well, we assembled the legs pretty darn quickly. We narrowed it by the 3″ that it needed and made all 4 leg assemblies (1 assembly has 2 legs) for the 2 tables. We got that part down pretty good. Then as we were putting the frame on, we realized that we put the 7′ piece where the 12′ piece was supposed to go. Argh! So off it came. After that, I think it went pretty smoothly, we did run out of the long nails at one point.

I could only help build one table, then the boys woke up from their nap and I had to watch them. But my dad continued and made the other table by himself. At the end of the day, we were so proud of what we accomplished and can’t wait to put them in place and start repotting the plants. We didn’t have enough wood to put slats on the bottom part, but that can always be added later. It looks really good and he has so much room now to plant whatever he wants.

It has been really fun to work on a project. Unfortunately, the boys suffered since they had to stay in most of the day. It has been rainy though, so it’s not like we could’ve done anything outside anyway. They have been watching an awful lot of TV, which I feel so guilty for. I try to turn it off and read them a story but they immediately say “la la, la la!!!” and then ignore me when I don’t turn it on. They are talking a lot though, which is really good. They’re new phrase they say is “Kalea NOOOOOOOOOUUUUU!” Kalea is the dog, btw. It’s so cute, everytime we leave, they say bye to Kalea. I think that is the only “person” who they call by name. Elijah and I have a game that he buckles himself in the car seat and then we both exclaim “WOW!” And Rowan holds his arms out really wide to give anyone a big hug, but he actually doesn’t hug, he just keeps his arms out. Today we played a game of “can you do this?” And they copied almost everything that I did. It was really fun.

I’m trying to teach them to call me Mommy. So I ignore their whines and grunts to get my attention and mention “mommy” without looking at them, and when they do say “mommy”, I give them my full attention and ask what they would like. I think it’s working.

I forgot to mention that my cousin Lori came down from Maui and we got to see her last Saturday. I saw her about a year and a half ago when she was visiting her sister and brother in Seattle, so it hasn’t been too long. But for my dad and other cousins, it’s been a long time. It was a nice visit and she brought some old videos from 1987, when we had our reunion and we watched it. I was a sophomore in High School and boy was I a character! Every shot I’m doing something silly or I’m being loud. And I actually used to do my hair. One scene was really funny because the camera was on a tripod pointing to a group of people kind of far away - super boring, and then without warning, I pass by really quickly right in front like I’m on wheels with a big grin and shaka (I think). Ah, I crack myself up.