"I Do It Myself"

I am a full body RSDer.   Since my divorce and the adoption of Kiva in 2007, we have shared a small-ish, 2 bedroom, rental house with an average sized front yard and a back yard that has twice the square footage of our house.  If it weren't for the assistance of Boulder County Housing Authority, we'd probably be living in my parents basement ... um ... not an option for this single, independent woman of a mature-ish age.  My folks do help out quite a bit with occasional trips to the grocery store, hardware and garden store, pharmacies, gas for the Brown Bomber, food delivery when I can't move, just to name a few, and my brother, Houdini, offers me tremendous help with the stuff that's too heavy for me to manage, but for the most part I operate according to my 3 year old nephew's sense of logic ... "I do it myself!!"  Which is why all of the projects that I take on take forever to me complete!!  But ... most of them get completed eventually!!

From the day I signed the lease, I was told that I am the one responsible for all yard up-keep, but when I took possession, the entire front yard was comprised of weeds, bare spots, grassy spots, and squirrel holes.  (The mowing of the front is done weekly by my Good Neighbors, God Bless 'Em!!  I just have to water it!!) The back yard was a barren waste land where even earwigs went to die.  Hardened Colorado clay, tall weeds, viney weeds, holes in the fence, a wibbly-wobbly cinder block patio the size of a jail cell (not that I know from personal experience, but I do watch crime movies), a sloping sidewalk that pulls all water away from the yard, 2 gates that have to be manhandled to get open and closed ... and for 5 years, I let it go, looked passed the ugliness, and just dealt with it.  I couldn't afford to do anything else other than let it go.  Last summer was the 1st time I tried to budget and do something to tame the wilderness by testing my abilities to tend a small vegetable garden.  The deal that I made with myself was that if I could manage to gain a harvest from the few plants that I had going, I would graduate to a larger garden this year.  Well I got a decent harvest last year, so I started making plans for this year's gardening attempts!!  I had approached the Property Manager about splitting the costs and the labor to get the back yard tilled and seeded for grass, as well as seeding the front yard.  I was told, "no."  Enter Dad, stage left, to go to bat for me once again.  He got her to acquiesce to a 50/50 cost/labor agreement.  I was to call her at the beginning of May 2013 so we could schedule a time to proceed with the work before summer hit.  It snowed on May 1st so I called her as soon as it melted (May 3rd) ... and left a message regarding the yard and the fact that I needed a new screen door.  2 days later, the Maintenance Guy showed up and gave me a new door, but knew nothing about the work to be done in the back.  2 weeks later, before my Mom and I went to Kansas to see my sister and the Munchkins, I called again ... and left another message.  I called again on June 3rd and guess what?!?!?!?!  Yep, I left another message.  I began scraping a large swatch of clay and weeds to make room for the pallet veggie garden that I had planned.  Houdini came over and tilled the area for me with a shovel and helped me place the 4 pallets.  I filled them all with soil, sheep-n-peat, and plants.  I was following thru with my commitment to the 50/50 agreement.  This last Monday, June 17th, I called the Property Manager again.  1 more message finally warranted a return call and I was informed that the property owners had been moved to elderly assisted living and their son says that there's no money for frivolity ... a yard and a patio re-lay = a frivolous expense.

For over a year I have been promising Kiva and myself that we would have a yard to play in by the 4th of July, 2013.  We can't afford to go on any trips or vacations, so having a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing yard in which we can retreat from our stagnant life has become paramount.  And now it falls solely on my pain riddled shoulders. I have cancelled all plans with my Fun Folk (even though it kills me to be apart from their love and friendship), I am rerouting all of my available pennies (literally) to make my backyard as comfortable as possible, every single solitary spoon is being spent on doing all of the manual labor by myself, and the date of completion has been pushed back to July 14.

Being the independent woman that I am, I have a serious problem with asking for help.  I can't plan on when I'll have the spoons to do any work, so when the mood hits, I don the gardening gloves, cargo shorts, bikini top, tennis shoes, and I get busy until I just can't function anymore.  Don't yell at me for being this way.  I have had 44 years to perfect this particular level of independence and getting bashed for it only pisses me off and makes me more determined to "do it myself."  Over the years, my Mom, my Dad and my brother have learned how to play my "help" game.  They no longer offer to help me.  They stay in touch with me via texts during the daytime hours and when they know that I'm working outside, and if they have some time to spare, they just show up with their work gloves on and ask me what I need done next.  This is my FAMILY that we're talking about here.  The ones that I do ask for help when I'm absolutely desperate.  If they haven't been able to change my independent ways, there's no way in hell that anyone else can make me change them!!

I am frustrated, discouraged, angry, disappointed, and determined.  Not a great combo for someone who struggles with intense chronic pain.  Last night I made the conscious decision to change my crappy attitude and focus on my determination and the final product.  This morning I woke up with the dry heaves and even more determination than I had last night.  I have faith that as soon as my nausea pills kick in, I'll be back out there, sweating, slaving, scraping, raking, pulling, and repeating.  I have some orange plastic fencing to put around the newly seeded area (when I get it seeded) and I have more pallets being donated so that I can forego a bit of seeding and put in a little sun deck of my own design.  I have faith that Kiva and I will have a haven in which we chillax and recover for the rest of the summer.  I have faith that I will ignore the chastising words spewed by others and focus on my endgame!!  I have faith that if/when help shows up, it will be utilized and appreciated ... but I also have faith that it will not be asked for.  Yes, I'm a masochistic martyr!!  To know me is to like me.  To understand why I do what I do when I do it is to love me.  Screw you, Property Manager!!  "I do it myself!!"