item #4759
(things i will never be good at)
((because i choose not to be))


today was "freshen up beth kent's gold award project" (church clean-up) day at humc. we did not attend. it's not that we aren't concerned with the qualities aesthetic of our church, but it's the first saturday i've had off in a while, and we decided to do something more enjoyable. update the garden in front of our house. holy. shit.

what's the opposite of a green thumb?

the project started with a trip to hell. i don't know, exactly, what hell is or where hell is. hell could end up being nothing more than the complete and utter absence of god. like those nights that you don't remember dreaming. those nights where all you understand of your night's rest is that you feel recharged and that you've lost a big chunk of time. hell could very well be just like that without the restful feeling after waking up. because you don't wake up. because you'd be dead. and you weren't interested in the afterlife. or jesus. or whatever other way god wills us to find our way to see him. because you actively choose to not believe that such a reward exists and because of that choice, hell is just like sleep. without the waking up. and that would suck. am i giving anyone else the chills? maybe it's just me. or hell could be hot. the realization of an eternity spent paying for how awful a human being you've chosen to be. constant torture. constant fear. a spiritual and everlasting embodiment of that which terrorizes us the very most. if that latter scenario ended up being the way it played out, my hell would be lowe's.

to most men, a trip to lowe's is a good part to a good day. to me, it is everything that is wrong with life. why else would we have a phonebook with all sorts of people listed that we can pay to come and fix or shape or remodel for us? why in the world would we want to do it ourself? christ. i have no idea. if this makes me less of a man, then fuck it. i am ok with that.

we went to hell and everyone in trussville was there with us. the line to check out in the garden center stretched for days and grown men could be heard swearing at their wives because ordering their beloved back to aisle 666 for the weed-b-gone "that only someone as dumb as you" would forget is a better option than stepping out and away from being the eleventh customer in line at the cash register. sarah and hannah picked out plants, flowers, shrubbery, whatever the hell you call it and i was in charge of caroline. we both kept our head down, did our best not to make eye-contact with the "infected" and prayed to god to release us from this prison. lucky for us, we made it out unscathed, most likely not unforgiven.

our project started innocently enough, but a full two minutes in, i knew i was out of my league. i tried to dig holes where instructed, but my very soft, very smooth hands started to blister. i tried to pull weeds while down on all-fours, but my knees started to burn. the only thing i was any good at was trimming our bushes and i am convinced that this was because i could tell myself i was sabotaging the effort in some way through sheer destruction. sarah was hardly even supervising me. i could have edward scissorhanded my way through the garden leaving only bare limbs in my wake, but i feel that would have soured my wife's mood for the rest of the evening. i fell out of being productive shortly after my two minutes, but the project was finished nonetheless. weeds were pulled. holes were dug. plants were planted. mulch was spread. the front of our home is now easier on the eyes than it was six hours ago.

i am no gardener. this is an understatement. but i do put gardening into the same sub-category of "things i suck at" as i do working on a car, knitting and returning messages. none of these things, among many others, really take talent, do they? they don't require skill, per se. just patience. some willingness to learn. tools. and time. maybe all of those things put together add up to the "talent" necessary to make things bloom. i really don't know. i do know that it must have been a funny sight, the look of being completely overwhelmed that was surely written all over my face this afternoon. a look that said, "i have no idea what i am doing."

"and i don't want to know."