Oh...You Did Yard Work? But Did You Die?

A few weeks ago it was a 3-day weekend for me because of President's Day. And while others were taking advantage of the time to take off to the beach or catching up on their sleep, I decided it was time for me to get my yard under control.

 Because of the drought and not watering my backyard the previous summer, most of the good grass had died out and then we had El Nino hit and it made those weeds grow like crazy! Seriously crazy, just look! These weeds were almost as tall as I am!

If only weeds were flowers my backyard would have been gorgeous. I also cleaned out my flower pots and they are all ready for some pretty flowers. Normally my back yard is relatively clean but it was just out of control, again because of El Nino.

And my own El Nino, my son James has been working super long shifts and hasn't had the time to keep up with it, so it was up to me!

Luckily those weeds were all super easy to just pull our, roots and all. But there was a butt-load of them! I worked about four hours on Saturday and on Sunday my wonderful sister Lisa came over to help me for a couple of hours and I did about another four hours that day. That night the soreness finally hit and by Monday morning (President's Day) I could barely move!

I almost died! Serious pain! I couldn't do any yard work that day at all and spent most of it taking my mom to do lab work and that required getting in and out of my car and the pain was excruciating!

I'm not big on taking any kind of pills but I did finally take an Aleve which helped just a small bit.

Tuesday at work I was miserable! I knew that if I was going to make it through the day I was going to have to take a pain pill, so I did.

Tuesday was also the first day back from a three day weekend, it was super busy and my mind was not the clearest, but I got through it...or so I thought!

The next day I received a phone call from one of my clients who said she had been worried about me because I didn't respond to her email the day before. She said she told her son "Something must be wrong with Alicia because she always take care of anything we ask her to do within minutes!"

I apologized and rather than make excuses, I just told her the truth. I told her that I was in such pain from simple yard work that I had taken a pain pill and had been just a bit foggy the day her email came in. She laughed and laughed and then apologized for laughing and then laughed some more.

She said that she had gotten up that morning and it had been such a nice day that she took a bike ride out in the almond orchards and she could already feel that she wasn't going to be able to move the next day! She was glad that I was back to normal and advised me to get a gardener!

But no, I'm going to continue to do my own yard work because it makes me feel so damn good...well after I get through the initial pain and agony of the next day. I feel very accomplished when I do my own yard work! And you know what? Yard work can be hard, but does it kill you? Did I die? Nope!

So this past Sunday I did more yard work and while I was a bit sore on Monday it wasn't bad. Soon I hope to share pictures of pretty spring flowers. I'm even thinking of planting Roses this year. Wish me luck!