Any guy who loves opera, whose favorite sports are tennis and figure skating, and has not been fishing since he was 12 (and whose only experience with hunting is to find the centipede that just crawled behind the toilet) is obviously not going to win any Macho Man Competitions. So I suppose it’s surprising that I should have felt a little weird wearing pink work gloves when I dug a hole for Kathy the other day.
It all started with a recent trip to Central Saw to drop off our lawn mower for its springtime tune up. (That’s right- I did so the first week in July. At this rate, we’ll have our lawn mower in working order just in time for autumn’s first frost.) My wife asked me if I could pick up an extra pair of work gloves for her because Central Saw sells the kind she prefers- they’re rubber with these little grips on them that really help when need protection and dexterity both- and suggested I pick up a pair for myself. (A subtle hint, if I ever heard one.) But because I didn’t have much cash with me, and these appear to be the Cadillac of garden gloves, I could only afford one pair…. so I did the only selfless thing I could do: I bought a pair for Kathy and put off purchasing my own for the next visit. And I even picked out a pink pair because I figured that our niece Lorelai – who adores Kathy and anything pink – would like them. But somehow I got the sizes mixed up and grabbed a Large when my wife in fact “wears” a medium in garden gloves…. while unfortunately for me in this case, Large is my size in a garden glove. So without meaning to, I had purchased for myself a pair of pink gardening gloves.
O Joy.
They got their first workout the day before yesterday when Kathy asked if I could help her dig a hole so she could plant a very pretty purple flowered vine that she hopes will grow up and encircle our little outside whatever-you-call-it from which hangs our hammock chairs. Whenever you see holes dug on television, it always seems like the easiest thing in the world- and you don’t have to be Barry Bonds to do it either. But as I made my first attempt to dig into the soil, with my pink-gloved-hands dripping the shovel, I suddenly felt more like Betty Boop than Barry Bonds. The ground felt like solid rock and every time I tried to pierce the surface of the soil, the shovel would quiver in my hands like it carried electric current. Kathy quietly went off to the garage and came back with another kind of lawn implement- sort of like a hoe but where the blade just extends straight down our of the handle instead of turning 90 degrees. I suppose it’s like an ice pick but designed for the ground. And with that tool I was finally able to carve out a little rectangle – and with one of the corner points of the blade I was finally able to dig into the soil a bit. And with each little centimeter, I found myself feeling a little better about myself and this whole undertaking. And when I had finally finished digging what amounted to hole that was 6 inches deep, I felt like a combination of Sir Edmund Hillary and yes, Barry Bonds- except that if I had taken steroids, this would probably have been a heck of a lot easier. But I hate needles, so I think I will stick to my spindly-armed self.
Anyway, it felt like an accomplishment of monumental proportions. . . even though two feet away from it is a hole dug by Bobbi and Ellie that’s even deeper (which was a convenient place to deposit the dirt from my hole.) But they’re built for hole-digging – while I seem to be built more for opera video viewing and bath tub lounging. But maybe after digging a few more holes, that will begin to change.
pictured above: the aforementioned hole being dug- This picture doesn’t give as good a view of the hole as others, but you certainly get a great view of my pink gardening gloves. Lovely, aren’t they?