Are you guys sitting down? I need you to be sitting down for this. I have a really serious and shocking thing to say at you. I'm very worried Awesomesauciness is going to have a heart attack when she hears this news because she always says she's super old and apart from being incredibly sassy, that's all I really know about her. Maybe everyone can go and sit with her while you read this just to make sure she's ok.

I'll wait.

Ok. Now is everyone sitting down in Awesomesauciness's house? Is she as funny in person as she is here? Does she have cats? Did she ask about me OMG YOU HAVE TO TELL ME EVERYTHING SHE SAID LEAVENOTHINGOUT!

My big news is that I, Eli Whittleblister McCann, performed manual labor.

You guys. This is not a drill. I did actual physical work this weekend. BY MYSELF. WITH NO HELP FROM ANYONE. I actually, legitimately, hashtag did it myself. I didn't hashtag do it someone else's self.

I HASHTAG DID IT MYSELF.


Let me explain.

So my house sits up on top of this hill, which gives me a pretty awesome view of the west side of the valley from the front porch, but it also makes me feel like a target for terrorists. When I moved into the place, there was really no landscaping in the front yard. It was just one grass-covered hill down to the street. And this has always felt kind of odd to me.

Last year I planted a few trees in the front yard just to have something between me and the criminals. But there has still been something missing.

So you know what I did this weekend? I said to myself I said "Eli. You are an absolutely beautiful man and you are going to plant a hedge today." And then I got super embarrassed and I was like, "stop it! You're beautiful." Because I can't take a compliment. But then I realized that since this was a conversation with myself, deflecting the comment back onto the complimentor was just another way of getting a compliment. It all got very confusing for a while but the point is that two different speakers have now called me beautiful.

I wholly underestimated how much work it would be to plant a hedge. It never occurred to me that digging out the grass all around the perimeter of my front yard, moving that grass to a dirt plot in the backyard, and then planting 20-something bushes is actually not super easy.

And it's a good thing I didn't know that when I got started because I probably wouldn't have gotten this accomplished after 9 hours on Saturday:




You guys. Nobody has ever been as proud of anything as I was after finishing this.

Even The Perfects couldn't deny that I had done a good job. Mr. Perfect yelled out to me that he was impressed. I have already added his statement to my resume. That part looks like this:

Quotes from my References
"The day Eli was born was the bloodiest day of my life." Cathie McCann
"If anyone is going to slap my child in the grocery store, I hope it would be Eli." The Non-angry moms on the Internet
"Eli . . . ha[s] been pre-approved for a credit card!" American Express
"Wow, Eli! I'm impressed [with everything about you and you are the best neighbor we've ever had and we like seeing you naked through the window every day]!" Mr. Perfect
So, yeah. I don't want to lose my job. But let's just say that I'm preeeeeeeetty confident I wouldn't stay unemployed for long.
~It Just Gets Stranger