I'm a Good Girl, I Am!

Spring has finally arrived in Northeast Ohio, and I can only hope that we won't get any more miniblasts of winter! The winter just passed was long and hard, and I'm not sad to say "Farewell!"

As the flora is beginning to green up, I'm needing to clean out the beds around the house to make room for growth. Last Sunday afternoon, while the Jazzman was golfing, I got out and did some raking and pulling.

I was reminded of the yardwork I used to do at my daddy's lake cottage. Here's my description from a post written in 2008.

One of my most prominent memories is of the summer when my boys were, I believe, two-and-a-half and one. That would have been 1976. My daddy had a lake house out near the back entrance to Walt Disney World where he would go from Saturday noon to Sunday night to fish and relax. The house sat on two lakefront acres and had lots of grass that had to be mowed regularly. That summer he was having heart problems again and couldn’t go out there every weekend. TJ and Tyler’s dad was working at WDW as an entertainment supervisor. Every Saturday morning we would pack up all the accoutrements two toddlers require and head out to the lake, 45 miles away, for the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon I would crank up the riding mower and mow the grass, which would involve about 45 minutes of riding around in the sun, heat and humidity. The result for me, every week, would be a screaming headache. As I sat on that mower, riding, turning, riding, I imagined my daddy whispering in my ear, “You’re a good girl.” He was one of only two people in the first 46 years of my life who made me feel I had any worth. To this day, when things are hard and I take steps to ease them, I hear daddy telling me I’m a good girl and tears come to my eyes. He was one of a kind and died way too early.

It never fails. Whenever I'm doing something hard and/or painful, I can hear my daddy encouraging me. We should all be so lucky—to have such a cheerleader on our side.



I've been trying to get to the gym every morning, and the surest way to do that is to beg Tyler to let me drive the babes to school, which is sorta on the way. I called him this morning, and he said, "I think they've been missing me this week, so I'll take them."

First, let me say, "What a good dad!"

And then it reminded me of my sophomore year in high school, when I had to catch the bus ("first on, last off") at 6:00 a.m. Daddy—always up early to make rounds and clear up outstanding paperwork before the day's surgeries and patients—would drive me the mile-and-a-half to the Rexall Drug parking lot and sit with me while we waited for the bus to arrive. That was the year when I have the most memories of him, the year I spent more time with him than any other.

Again, how lucky I am to have such wonderful memories. And my grandchildren are following in those footsteps.

Today's photos? Before and after of the beds on the west side of the house.

I'm a good raker and weeder.