"Kids, run outside and flag down Dad"

When Don and I became engaged, we decided to live in my house, since I only had about 7 years left on my mortgage. It was a hard sell for Don. I live on a fairly busy road, there are no children in my stretch of yards, and we have a neighborhood agreement against fences. It is a neighborhood of brick duplexes that, up until a few years ago when people started remodeling, all looked the same. One night, coming home from a date, Don missed my house 3 times and kept having to go around the block. We were only dating casually at the time, but I had an image in my mind of my children watching out the front windows one evening for Daddy to appear and yelling, "Mama, Daddy just missed the house again." I responded, "Run outside, quick, children, and wave him down the next time he drives by." Little did I know then that we'd have three children. Thankfully, Don learned where our driveway is before they were born and only misses it now ocassionally.

When we were first married, I bought him a metal shed for the backyard. He still managed to clog up the house with all his junk. Finally, in frustration one day, I begged him to put his "stuff" in the shed. "It leaks like a sieve," he said, "I'm not putting anything important in it." Important? Like the huge hunk of rough wood framed like a picture that contains about 1,000 old key? Or maybe the foam rubber heart? Something had to be done.

So, when we remodeled our house 2 years ago, as a birthday present for Don, I bought him a large, beautiful new wood shed and had our contractor pour a cement pad for it and roof it with shingles to match the house. It's beautiful and very useful. But what to do about the old, rusted eyesore? For over a year now, I've been trying to get rid of it. Someone offered to take it off our hands during a yardsale, but my father thought my sister could use it, so we hung on to it for her. Finally, over a year later, a neighbor of mine who mentioned he was looking for a shed looked it over one day and, the next, it was gone. He swooped in like a giant eagle, unseen by any of us, and when we looked out the back windows, we had a huge, empty space in the backyard. My much-hoped-for clean yard. It took over a year, but I got what I wanted.

This morning, I looked out the back window, greeting the day. There, in place of my eyesore shed is an eyesore MOUNTAIN of mulch, apparently dropped off yesterday by the guys cutting and chipping limbs approaching power lines. My neat, beautiful yard is still nothing more than a dream, but a worthy dream, at least.