Expensive Dirt

Dear Diary

Today I lost my job as Master Gardener of Weasel. The only thing I can now be trusted to do is pull weeds.

I had no idea there was such a thing as Expensive Dirt. I thought that was stuff you hired a private detective to find.

No. I am wrong.

My husband bought Expensive Dirt at the plant nursery and gave me the job of reseeding the bare patches in our back yard with grass seed.

I have been missing an entire part of my brain ever since I gave birth to my child. I swear that the very process of conceiving and all that came with it, is the equivalent of some cosmic god reaching down from heaven and grabbing a fistful of my brain and yanking it out . . .

Little Cosmic God: Which part of her brain am I s’posed to take?

Big Cosmic God: Doesn’t matter. She won’t be using any of it when we’re done with her. Just grab a big hunk.

Since I became a mother, I cannot remember what day of the week it is. I can’t drive on certain days. I lose everything I touch (I am only exceeded in this feat by my husband). And I can’t follow directions.

I remember my husband specifically telling me to mix the grass seed in with the dirt and spread it all over and then . . .

For some reason, I got to reading the directions on the bag. Now this is something only desperate and spacey people do. I totally spaced out and read the directions and decided to follow them.

I don’t know what ego-driven entity made me think I was Queen of the Grass Seed that day. Somehow, I forgot entirely my husband’s directions. There’s nothing wrong with following the directions on the back of a package -- Except when your husband gets his directions specifically from a landscape professional who seeds grass for a living!!!

Yep. I messed up some Expensive Dirt.

Then I began to think. I wonder what the whole point is anyway? I mean, with grass. We just end up cutting it. The clover always comes back. The moles tear it up. I must have been a philosopher in a previous life, because - - why grass? You see what has happened to my brain? I just never understood the big deal about anything in life, period.

Which is why I am always getting fired from jobs. If you give me something too important, I will surely mess it up. Like the time I had to write somebody’s name in fancy calligraphy on a piece of paper.

Now this person had just died and for some reason nobody in his family wanted to write his name on this paper. So they picked me.

Me: I don’t know how to do calligraphy.

Them: But you have nice handwriting

Me: No, I don’t. (If you know me, this is true. I write like hell.)

Them: Please?


What am I supposed to do? This fella just died and these people are going through crap and all they want to do is not have to write his name on the paper.

So I said okay.

Me: How do you spell his name?

Them: Well, his first name is Bill, so write William -- hey Mavis! How do you spell Bill’s middle name?

Nobody knew.

Nobody knew how to spell his middle name. Not even his wife. So they looked at me. Gave me some letters that were in his middle name and asked me to pretty much make something up.

Which I did.

All the while inside I was fuming. "How can you do this to me? How can you give me this responsibility? You know I am going to mess it up and when his mom looks at this piece of paper she’s going to be really mad and then you are going to point the finger at ME! You are going to say, well, the church secretary did it and you know how pathetic they are. They can’t get a job anywhere else and they make shitty tuna casseroles, don’t they?"

Well. I wrote his blasted name on the piece of paper and yes, I did spell it wrong and NO, it did not look like fancy calligraphy, because did I mention I can’t do calligraphy?
God help me, and here comes that stupid voice inside that always butts in on me.

Stupid Voice Inside That Always Butts In On Me and Screws Up Everything: What the hell does Bill care? He’s DEAD!

Which is why I’m not a church secretary anymore.

These are the times I wish I could just check out of the human race: go to that one-stop federal office; turn in my social security card, my birth certificate, passport, license and library card and say: Please excuse me from the rest of my species, because I’m not getting it. Is there a shuttle to Mars leaving anytime soon?

Is there a job on earth left for people like me?

Well, I can still weed. I’m a champion weeder and today, I am going to clean out the junk from under our deck. And throw stuff away. I can throw things away pretty good, too, but Only if they are Obvious Throwaways. The other day I threw away some screws that I wasn’t supposed to. I’m not going to tell you about that.