So…yesterday was an interesting day. It started at Star Nursery and ended in the parking lot of a Starbucks. But before we get to what happened, let’s backtrack to a few weeks ago. I’ve been doing some minor remodeling on my back patio, which has become many mini projects within a project. I’ve laid flagstone, put up a little fence around the flagstone, drove in tree stakes around the fence, and hung solar lights from the stakes. Then there was more solar lighting, plants and more plants. It was looking awesome…until the landscapers came. The guy in charge of the leaf blower got a little too crazy and blew a lot of dirt out from between my flagstone. There was enough difference between the dirt height and stone height to cause a tripping hazard. And since I was planning to fill the flagstone cracks with rock, I figured it was a good day to jump on that. And here’s where the story begins.
Flagstone After The Landscaper Left
As you can see, the dirt is recessed enough to to cause little Z to trip when she’s running around like a chicken. Time to stop procrastinating on the rock filler!
Choosing My Rocks
Narrowed it down to either the Arizona River Rock and the Red Pointy Hurt-My-BareFeet Rocks….that’s not their official name…and you can probably guess which I ended up going with.
A Trip To The Rockyard
So I headed over to Star Nursery’s Rock yard (Let it be known that I freakin’ LOVE this place)…that is all…moving on. Picked out some Arizona River Rock and filled three 5-gallon buckets for my project. Total? $5.86! That seriously rocks…sorry…had to.
Back Home To Fill The Gaps
I got home and carried one bucket of rocks to the patio to get started. The patio was looking pretty good and the day was going pretty well, until…
A Quick Detour Gone Wrong
Before I was done with the rock, I had to leave to get Z from school. When I picked her up, she really wanted a treat. Of course she picked a cake pop, which is only at Starbucks, which is nowhere near our house…the things we do for our kids.
Due to crazy traffic and bad GPS directions, I was already grumpy when I approached Windmill. I was at a stop sign perpendicular, and there was no stop sign going in either direction for the cross traffic. We sat there for what seemed like forever. There was also a turn lane from Windmill to the street I was on. I watched one after another NOT turn when they had a chance…they were on their phone…or too afraid to turn in front of a car that was any further than a mile away…by the time the third one didn’t turn, I was IRATE. And since I didn’t know at this point that I was about to have a story-worthy moment, I didn’t take a pic of this moment. Suffice it to say I looked almost exactly like the gal in this pic.
Don't Drive Angry
When it was finally my turn to go (in what seemed like an hour later), I was so mad that I stepped on the gas full force and turned left…with a little more emphasis than I should have. That’s when I heard CRASH…TUMBLE…TUMBLE…THUD.
“Mommy, what was that?”
“Well, honey, that would be two buckets of river rock spilling all over the back of the car”. Obviously I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I left two of the three buckets of rock in my hatchback…
…I also wasn’t thinking about what would happen if I opened the door of the hatchback when we got into the Starbucks parking lot.
Free Advice: Don't Open The Car Door
With no intelligent thought like “hey, maybe I should put one of these now-empty buckets under this door before I open it”…I just flung that hatchback door open and out spilled all of the 10 gallons of river rock. It wasn’t as bad as this photo, but imagine a smaller version of this with Z and I on our hands and knees in the Starbucks parking lot, under the car, and just around it, picking up the river rock and putting it back into the buckets.
We'll Take TWO Cake Pops Please
Actual photo of the back of my car after the incident. You better believe we earned those cake pops yesterday.
