May 19, 2009

Does This Lawn...


...make my grass look fat?

Okay, so I’m still pretty surprised at what some fresh air and a lack of NY'er's in your face can do for your overall state of health. Don’t get me wrong, NYC’s a wonderful place, but I must’ve been ready for a change.

We moved to CT in September, and I’ve been back to NYC exactly once since. Ann called me about two hours after my first meeting “So, what’s it like to be back?”.

“Someone’s already been mean to me and it smells like urine—I’m getting the 4:40 instead of the 5:00 train, see you for drinks on the porch”. Pretty much sums up my last trip to the city.

I can’t say there’s been any serious downside to my new life here. I’ve grown accustomed to the staff at Home Depot just about peeing themselves with laughter when they see me coming in, knowing I’ll be loaded with just about every newbie question a NKO (the suburban) B can rock.

My last visit started out with a real knee-slapper “Hi, welcome to home depot, how can I help you?”

“How do you grow grass?”.

This was followed by a blank stare and a fairly long silence.

Hmmm, Home Depot. The name said it all. A depot of things you need for the home. My home needed grass.

“Uh, well we have a gardening and lawn section just past aisle eight…”.

I walked past aisle eight outside onto a tidy little 1.5 acre of land filled four stories high with every conceivable lawn / garden / home gazebo / product ever devised. Seriously, there were tools I’d never even seen before stacked Christmas tree high.

But I didn’t see any grass. I saw plants, dirt, trees, flowers, tools, I even saw entire sheds pre-assembled. But no grass.

“Hey, welcome to home depot what can I help you with today?”.

The woman in the hunter orange vest had the kind of face that could grow flowers just with a smile. Kindly. Nurturing. God had sent me an angel. Visions of a lush green carpet of grass by the weekend danced in my head.

“I need grass”.

“Great, follow me…”. I followed the bright orange vest as she tossed out question to me like flower petals falling off a branch…

…is the crab grass all gone, because you’ll want to take care of that if you haven’t but it’s really too late since you should’ve killed that during the winter it’ll just strangle whatever tries to grow so for now you can just leave it, it’s the brown patches on your lawn just rake up the old crab grass bag it, do you have lawn and leaf bags? we’ll get you some and then I’d recommend a good sun and shade mix of seeds go ahead an distribute them evenly we’ll get you a seed sprayer so you can maximize distribution and after you lay your seeds you’ll need a fertilizer unless your soils too acidic in which case you should consider…”

I’d lost her after crab grass. Managed to regain consciousness somewhere around “seeds”, then kind of blacked out again and came to as we arrived at a pallet of ten pound bags.

“Here you go, fertilizers on over by the geraniums…”. She handed me a heavy plastic bag. It said “Grass Seed: Sun/Shade”. On the bag was a beautiful picture of a vast, green lawn. Children were playing on it. It looked like a magazine cover. I wondered if maybe I could just cut out the picture and tape it to the dirt in my backyard.

The bag was $25. For a bag of seeds. It seemed expensive and unnecessary especially since I didn’t want a bag of seeds. I wanted a bag of lawn. The bag was not only heavy, but it was happy hour. I needed a drink and a new plan.

Back home I sucked on my third Corona, staring at the bare patches on my newly adopted “lawn to be”. It was clear to me now there was no way that little picture from the bag would cover my lawn. I mean, my earth. Turns out growing grass is a lot of work.

So I plan to tackle it tomorrow. Or possibly this weekend. Or, never. There’s always spray paint. Be kind of homage to NYC. I could just graffiti on my lawn and call it a day.

Whatever I do, one thing’s for certain.

I’m definitely writing a letter to Home Depot and recommend they change their name to Home Suggestion. Or Home Possibility. But depot it isn’t. Place is the size of a Kennedy Airport, and they don’t have one lawn there.

May 15, 2009

Am I Gay, Or Is It The Coffee?


Here’s my theory; we’re all insane until proven otherwise. We just don’t know we’re nuts until you have one of those moments when the soundtrack of your own thoughts falls away and you hear yourself talk.

Like in line at Dunkin Donuts, it was like suddenly someone turned off the stereo and I could hear the words come out of my mouth and echo around the store:

“…thanks, I’ll have a medium light, one Sweet and Low and a chocolate chip muffin”.

It was a car-key moment. The moment when everything drops away but the sound of the car door slamming shut as you lock your keys inside.

I sounded so Man-Gay. Not straight up “Gay Gay”, and nothing on the down low, no inner cowboy secretly looking to take that long weekend escape on Brokeback Mountain.

Just Man-Gay.

“Medium light with one Sweet and Low” isn’t gonna make anyone look up from their morning paper and go “Alpha male on the floor, stand back boys…”. So I stood there fumbling around for some money thinking how MG my order sounded.

And I worried that I’d been too pampered, too lucky in life. And I haven’t even been that lucky. But then I heard something that made me pause, reflect, then almost laugh out loud.

Guy behind me goes “…I’ll take a large coffee, extra light skim…with a splash of cream and four Splendas”.

Okay, I may not be the toughest guy on the planet, but I was ready to hand this guy the ass-less cowboy chaps and say “You go Village People…”.

C’mon.

Okay, the splash of cream is equal to the skim milk content altogether so what’s up with that? Just freaking order it with the cream.

Which brings me to my second point. I know I live in Suburbia now, but who the &^%()*%$ orders a ‘splash of cream” in a $2 cup of Joe at Dunkin Donuts?

I’m all for us dudes getting in touch with our inner Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, but puh-lese, you do not need to be taking the inner Queer Eye out for a picnic lunch.

Or letting him order a ‘splash of cream’, for that matter. And while I’m at it, Splenda? Honest to god are you really gonna tell me you can take the Pepsi challenge, line up packets up Splenda, Sweet / Low, Equal, do a blind taste and pick one out?

And, god help you it you do possess the freakish ability to separate artificial sweeteners by taste, if you are a straight male, can you please not order ‘splenda’?

Why?

Say it again: Splenda.

You order Sweet and Low, you’re calling a spade a spade. It’s sweet, d’uh. That’s it job. And it’s fake as Pam Anderson’s floatation devices so obviously it’s low in calories.

But dude, you order Splenda you better not be wearing a penis because the word Splenda is about one man-gina away from borrowing your wife’s lip-gloss and trolling the park after work.

Hey, order your drink. Live large. But you get two perks per cup. You order coffee, you can add milk or sugar. It can be skim, soy, cream, half and half, hey you can hook up your own cow and squirt away.

But you don’t get to ask for your milk and a splash. No. Not now, not ever.

Unless you are Carston from Queer Eye or Liza Minnelli.

Or maybe Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah, yeah I know; he was just an actor playing a gay cowboy.

But he was on the bottom.

I’m just saying.

If you're gonna be a muffin, be the top.