The more I read and write, the more I listen to people speak (myself included, at times), the sadder I become about the state of education these days, which is why I love this idea. In a nation where “no child left behind” is resulting in no child getting ahead, either, at last there is something simple and fun that I can do to help myself, my (future) children, and my neighbors, simultaneously. All without leaving the comfort of my couch, except to refill my beer hat.

Despite the fact that we haven’t yet replaced a few pieces of siding damaged in last summer’s freak hail storm nor gotten around to having the roof checked by a professional (I still say it’s a scam), I like to think that we are decent caretakers of our property. We get some slack for being new. We keep the landscaping in reasonably good condition, clean up the odd items that have been mysteriously appearing on our lawn the past two trash days (I don’t know if the driver is drunk or just has really bad aim), and spend a fair amount of time making improvements on the inside of the house.

And yet, it is only due to the kindness of a stranger that I am finally able to admit that we are bangers. We wait until enough things of a certain category accumulate on the To Do list that they start to build up their own inertia and then we bang them out all at once. I’m still trying to decide whether that’s a bad practice. One could reasonably call it an efficient distribution of labor but, it just feels so illicitly delicious.

So thank you, neighborhood punks, wherever you are, for bringing this fact to my attention by taking a baseball bat to my mailbox last week. Although it is still askew and I fear for the ultimate fate of the sad, crunched little red flag on the side, it clung to its post, withstood your single blow and still performs it primary duty, steadfastly greeting the world like a yip-yip martian. I would have been tempted to try fixing it last weekend, but got sick and preferred to mope about the house with a fever instead. That’s how dedicated I am to being a banger.

Our home has been a near constant buzz of activity for the past month or so, what with the basement bathroom tiling, the lawn and garden tending, the tree drama, the knitting of pirate hats for my sister’s bachelorette party and, most recently, the repainting of most of the first floor. Since work has also been extra busy during this period, I just haven’t had it in me to sit down and write about my day when all I wanted to do was sleep.

Things are not settling down anytime soon, either. The sister’s wedding is coming up at the end of this month and, though I’ll be out there for a week, I have about 750 miles to cover and a lot of people to see while I’m there. Also, I may be going to London for a week in the fall. That is, if I can get my passport paperwork filed in time. I’ve been carrying it around with me all week just waiting for a few spare minutes to turn it in.

Sadly, the tree drama continues. After my email was ignored, we received a second letter from the president of the company who sent the first letter. It was properly spelled, grammatically correct, personally signed, and proof that we weren’t the only ones complaining about the lack of communication. Of course, the damage was already done but, in the end, there was nothing to do but send them the first of four installments and try not to be too bitter about it.

Not long after, we received a third letter on the subject, this time from the very clever landscape architect at the company that had been hired to provide and plant the trees. In this letter, he took the time to clarify his involvement in the project (i.e. distance himself from the fiasco), detail the proper care of the new plantings (which the other guys never bothered to do) and pointedly make himself available for questions. Incidentally, this guy also designed our neighbor’s beautiful new landscaping along the back of our property line.

After that, we were feeling pretty good about the situation until we came home from work one day and found one of the new trees now standing 8 feet to the left of where it had once been. There is now a nearly dead circle of grass and dirt where they plugged up the old hole. I think someone is going to get a phone call in the next couple of days.

Oh, and the 10 free Arbor Day trees? Three of them (a crabapple, a hawthorne, and a redbud) are leafing happily in the lee of the house. I gave another crabapple and a goldenraintree to good homes. Although I keep watering them just in case, I’m pretty sure I killed the rest by reseating them too late. Though, to be fair, I think the dogwoods were DOA.