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.