Do you use your powers for good, or for awesome?: BONSAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

or, nesting on steroids. Take your pick... either way, it's been kind of a long crazy week around here. Lots of 6am meetings with the UK team, so lots of 530 wake ups. Ill. and Monday was just a "bend over and take it in the scapegoat" day, chock full of meetings but sadly devoid of any results. You know the type. It didn't help that I'd woken up at 2 am and couldn't get back to sleep. morale was at an all time low.

Anyhoo, I hadn't seen much improvement in my attitude over the course of the week, but I did notice that I'd become obsessed with dusting, cleaning, moving shit around, etc. And that I'm like a walking sebaceous gland AGAIN even though I'm 30 and there should be *some* perk to adulthood, no? Aah yes, the ugly face of PMS back in town and ready to play. I'm really (not really) looking forward to next week, when I'm on the road all over the map for 6 days straight of work and meetings, including a health fair in Ohio that I'm working next Saturday. Usually playing Dr is one of my favorite games, but this health fair is going to be for old diabetics. = not sexy.

So anyhow, the week sort of went Monday, very angry, Tuesday very moody/cleany. Weds was an amalgam of both which is to say I was in that most delightful of phases "the rage nesting phase" Looking around the house for an outlet I discovered there was nothing that needed demolishing. Unfortunate. Looking outside however, I was struck with inspiration.
The hedges. Oh, the hedges. The hedges in front of my house are huge and unruly and I've never been overly fond of them. There's no flowers, there's nothing about them I can eat. They just don't give a lot back to the community you know?

Sometimes I worry when I come home late at night that someone could be hiding on my porch waiting to kidnap me and I wouldn't see them because the hedges would hide them. The hedges also make it difficult to grow anything in my tiny little bricked off front garden plot thing because they hang right over and block the sun so all that grows is straggly little weed things. I decided the hedges had to go. And the more I thought about it, the better of an idea it seemed. F*ck the hedges!

Exhibit A. There could totally be a mugger on my porch! How gross.

So I consulted my bonsai guru to inquire about the necessary tools for the job: loppers. (yay! I knew I needed some of those!) Then with the parting words "have fun with your bush" I was off. I hopped in the silver bullet and sped up to Ayd's Hardware, which I favor because of their nifty old time paintjob and acquired the loppers. I came home, mixed myself a stiff drink and practiced smiling while saying "This will totally grow back" (more advice from the guru). It took me a while to get it down convincingly, which I needed to do because I know myself and I get a little enthusiastic with the loppers. I was really going to need to work with the bush on this one and win it over, because I was about to do something drastic.

So: Armed with my drink, my loppers, the ipod and a huge fake smile I headed out and got down to it. and how!

I really only intended to take a little off the bottom and make the whole thing manageable. But I was doing so good I just couldn't stop, and so I kept on. At some point, I had the right amount of greenery removed but due to a temper tantrum I had about 2 mos ago using the neighbors loppers, there were some bare spots in the middle of what turned out to be bush 2 (who knew?!) I hemmed, I hawed, I decided one bush is enough for me and it was off with bush 2.

In the end, the whole thing was very therapeutic (for me, I'm still not sure the bush is 100% with me) The woman who lives next door to me on the bush side seems to have mixed feelings on the matter -she apparently had some fondness for my ample bush- but this isn't about her so I just smiled through her pain, and pointed to my headphones, miming "I can't hear you".

If I could go back, I think the only thing I might have done differently would be to cut it from the top some to a lower height and then bonsai the unbonsai-able. But as I told the bush "this will totally all grow back" and now I have something to look forward to for the spring. :0)