Troy's Blog

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I'm just a typical Dad. I have a good wife of 20+ years and 2 good kids. All 3, at times, contribute to my hair graying or falling out.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Slave Labor aka my weekend with KJ

dictionary results for: slave
/sleɪv/ Pronunciation Key
slaved, slav·ing.
–noun
1. a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant.
2. a person entirely under the domination of some influence or person.

Use in sentence structure: While visiting my sister in Chanhassen, I was treated like a slave. OR I spent my vacation day and weekend slaving away for my sister.

Yes, I just got back from Minneapolis. I had meetings Thursday and Kristi invited me over for the long weekend since I was in the area and had taken Friday off as a VACATION day.

Quoting her: "Oh, by the way, I have a couple of flowers I'd like you to help me plant". At that point, I'm assuming holding her lemonade glass, offering opinions, or better yet - getting there late enough that it is already done.

Friday we dug holes and planted. Saturday we dug more holes and planted more PLUS laid down landscaping paper and mulch. Sunday (the Lord's commanded day of rest - apparently except for slaves but I didn't see that part in the bible) we laid down more landscaping paper and mulch.

After spending 3 days at her place, there a couple of things I learned or that were reinforced into my memory.

1) Her kids are cute and extremely fun to be around. You just never know what is going to be said or what they will or will not do. Of course since they weren't mine, it was always funny.

2) A "couple" of plants means 26 shrubs, 55 plants, 3 huge trees, and countless other things. (KJ, I may have rounded up).

3) Either Jeff hates physical work or he is smarter than me and left town before the work started. I think it is a combo - he hates work and left town before the work started. I won't go so far as to say he is smarter - after all, he did marry her.

4) Kristi does NOT have tennis elbow. She has "waive at every neighbor" elbow. The spot where we landscaped above referenced hellacious project is at the entrance to their neighborhood. Every time a car entered or left, KJ would stop whatever she was commanding and waive to the passerby. Roughly 99.8% of the people knew her. I believe the other .02% knew her and chose to look the other way fearing they'd have to help. Roughly half stopped on their way out to offer encouragement and the other half stopped on their way back in to compliment HER on the work.

Truth be told, I had a great time. We had almost 3 full days of fun and interesting conversation, lots of good food, perfect weather (if you like sweaty relatives), lots of laughs with and at the kids and with and at ourselves, and I'd do it all over again. Comparible to child birth.....eventually the pain will be forgotten and soon you're ready for another.

Thanks for the fun weekend KJ!

3 comments:

KJ said...

Thanks for all of you help this weekend. I did notice that you rounded up the number of plants we planted, but somehow this does not surprise me.
By the way, the neighbors all came over today for drinks and hors d'oeurves out by the landscaping (kind of like what we did for you...warm water to drink and mosquitoes to munch on). They complimented me repeatedly on all MY hard work. Being the well-mannered lady I am, I said 'Thank you.'
So thanks again for all your hard work, I'm waving at you from my house. Ow, my elbow hurts.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good weekend. So glad you got it all done. I am sure Jeff is too. After all he was smart enough to leave the city and not come back until it was all done. I am sure the neighbors enjoyed all the activity. They might be disappointed not to have Kristi there to wave at them every day. Maybe she will have to set up a lawn chair next to this new landscaping and enjoy the view plus she can continue the waving thing.

Laurel said...

For what it's worth -- it looks great!! I would love an entry elaborating on #1 though!! Glad you guys had a great weekend. By the way -- did Ty ever get Kaitlyn and Sean's rooms painted?