Fitties

When I bought my house, my mortgage lender, Duane, sat me down and talked me though all the particulars. Most of it was pretty common sense stuff like, "After you sign these papers, don't immediately go and bulldoze your house."

But then he got to the part about actually owning the home. By page 200 or so, when my eyes were starting to glaze over, Duane mentioned, "...and if you get married then your husband, of course, will automatically own half of this home..."

And I jerked back awake and was all, "HOLD ON, COWBOY!!! What do you mean if I get married, my husband will automatically own half of this home?! Are you insane? This is MY home. I'm buying it. Not. Him." I became instantly irate at the fictitious husband.

Duane shook his head. "That's the way the law works in this state. He owns half your property when you get married."

"You must be mistaken. I am buying this house right now with the dollars in my bank account. If I got married tomorrow, half of my house wouldn't magically be paid for out of HIS bank account!"

The realtor sitting with us shook her head, "That's what I tried to tell you last week. Dena, the seller, got married 3 days ago. Her new husband automatically receives 50% of her income from the sale of this house, even though he never lived in it."

I slammed my title book shut. "That is a bunch of bullshit. The very idea."

Duane shook his head some more. "Huh...I don't normally see this type of a reaction from women. Lot of men freak out about a woman fleecing them. Never really see a woman freak out about a man taking all her property, though. Interesting..."

It was then that I realized I must be buying a house in the 1950's.

I was pretty upset about this for a few days. Looking back, I'm not sure why. It's not like I was even dating someone who could conceivably take half my house away from me. Still, I continued to be irate. I informed my father that I was no longer in the marriage market. If I met someone nice, I would just live with him indefinitely.

"That's exactly what Satan wants," replied Pastor Dad.

So I decided to just be single forever. And as a newly single woman (well, newly ETERNALLY single), I needed to start taking responsibility for my house. That is why this past weekend, when I saw some weeds in the front yard, I decided to "garden." That's what responsible, adult people do, after all.

It started out like this:

 ...which, as you can see, IS from the 1950's. But the weed that I decided to pull led to other weeds, and those led to other weeds. And 3 hours later, covered in mud, I realized that what I was actually "weeding" was this:

...which is clearly the maple tree in my front yard. It turns out I have no clue what "gardening" actually is. When my friend Jack texted me to send him pictures of the plants when they start blooming, I thought to myself, "Hmmmmm. I wonder what this nice pile of dirt will look like when it starts blooming??"

Because after 3 hours of back-breaking labor, that is all I have to show for myself. Well, that. And this: