From Blog Posts to Junk Cars: The Slippery Slope

Y’all … there’s a slippery slope between missing blog posts and winding up with a yard full of junk cars.

It starts so innocently. You have a bad day, there’s a global pandemic, and you just can’t cope so you miss posting your #bloglikecrazy post. It’s supposed to be 30 posts in 30 days. But you just say oh well and put it out of your mind. 

The next day, you’re going to get that post posted, but it’s busy and you’re not inspired. You missed one day. What’s another day?

That’s how it all starts! And pretty soon, you have a yard full of cars.

You’ve seen those yards, haven’t you? The ones where there’s no real yard … just a bunch of junk. Don’t you wonder how the people who live there wound up like that?

I do.

This is how I imagine it happens. 

The lawnmower breaks down in the yard. You’re going to move it. But then your dog dies and you’re sad and you don’t feel like it. Pretty soon the grass is growing around the lawnmower. And it’s going to be harder to move it now. And so you leave it there.

Then your car breaks down. And your first grade teacher dies. And the cat’s got cataracts. And there’s still supper to cook. 

So the car stays in the yard next to the lawnmower, you try to send a bouquet but the florist’s shop burned down, the cat blindly wanders off the deck and doesn’t land on its feet, and everyone has an El Charrito frozen dinner for supper. 

Before you know it, there’s a faded Big Wheel next to an old toilet with dead flowers growing in it next to a pile of tires you were going to paint white and make into a border down the driveway. What’s that over there? Another lawnmower? And Grandpa’s rusted out truck because you just can’t part with it and an upside down Jon boat just like the one y’all used to go fishing in.

Next thing you know, you can’t see the house from the road and the County is fixing to come calling.

And it probably started with missing a blog post or not making the bed or leaving dishes piled in the sink. Once you start letting things slide, you’re on the road to the hot place with good intentions blowing out your exhaust pipe like so much burning oil. 

That’s why the 22nd lesson I’ve learned in 2020 is you can’t let your guard down for a minute … not a second. It’s exhausting in “some” (read “SO SO SO MANY”) ways, but this year we need some order and structure. It will keep us sane. We have to stay vigilant! One minute you’re skipping a blog post with a flip oh well and the next minute you skip wearing a mask and get a nose full of the ‘rona. We’ve come this far. We can hang on a little longer. (Note that mask statement is an example. I do not have coronavirus.)

And since I’m three days behind, the 23rd lesson I’ve learned in 2020 is that is that there’s never a bad time for an idiom, which was my #bloglikecrazy theme a couple of years ago and you can read all those posts and a few more here. Today’s idiom is “let the slick end slide and let the rough end drag.” Basically, we’ve got to just keep on keepin’ on. 

And the 24th lesson I’ve learned in 2020 is that while being cooped up in a condo during this pandemic has made me miss having a yard for the first time ever, it’s evidently a good thing I don’t have one. I’ve been feeling so oh well that it would be full of rusted lawn mowers and toilets with flowers in them and faded children’s toys and a dead cat and old El Charito boxes. 

And there I’d be right in the middle of it all wondering how it got to be so bad.

And blaming it on a blog post. 

(This year for #BlogLikeCrazy, I’m talking about 30 lessons I’ve learned in 2020. Read the other entries here).