Why Perfectionists Shouldn't Do Yardwork

I think poor Jonathan might be coming upon The Change for men or something, because lately he's been having trouble sleeping. You know why? Because he can't stop THINKING. Never before has he experience the burden of being plagued by unsolicited thoughts. Welcome to MY life dude.

He wrote a huge list of things to get done so he can stop thinking about them all the time and start sleeping again. At first this was strangely satisfying, but now I just feel TERRIBLE for the guy. He's away from home for 11 hours a day and literally doesn't have the time for these kinds of projects. It's not fair that they should be troubling him to the point of insomnia. So on Saturday I sent him out golfing with a friend all day, and set out to eliminate as much of his list as I could before he got home.

I started with some major weeding, which I don't think has been done since last summer. That took most of the morning. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the process! There's something very soothing about having my hands in all that dirt. Maybe I should run for public office.

After the weeding I mowed the lawn, which I haven't done since I was about 14 years old. Shiney had to show me how to work the lawn mower. Embarrassing. Then I thatched the grass. My poor aching back! I was ready to be done at that point, but on the way inside I spotted a plant that I have HATED with the burning fire of a thousand suns since the day I first saw it in my yard. I decided I was done ignoring it, grabbed a little garden spade, dug it out and tossed it in the bin! Dusting my hands off, I looked up and saw a big plant too close to my driveway that has been annoying me for months. So I drew my little spade like a Samurai sword and started digging a hole for it on the other side of the yard.

As I dug, I kept running into some majorly big rocks. I didn't want them crowding in on my plant, impeding it's growth, so my mission was to remove them. Every time I thought to myself, "This is the LAST one and then I'll plant the thing and be done," I would see another rock behind that last one. "OK, just one more..." This went on for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. Apparently, there are SUPPOSED to be rocks in the ground. But my perfectionism wouldn't leave it alone. I wanted pure POTTING soil around my plant, and I was going to put that soil through a sieve to get it! Finally my neighbor staged an intervention. She came out and said, "Melain! Enough is enough! Get OUT of that HOLE!" I looked around at the now bathtub sized hole in the ground and humbly complied. She helped me get the plant in there and fill it back in with my lovely, rockless soil. "I stood in the rain and spent 5 minutes moving one of my plants last week," she laughed as she shook her head at my craziness.

I came away from the experience with a nasty farmers-tan sunburn, hands and forearms that looked like they'd spent the day with a masochistic acupuncturist, an ache in muscles that I didn't know existed, and a husband who finally got a good night's sleep. That last one made it all worth it.