Friday, April 25, 2008

I Like My Lawn Completely The Way It Is

Trugreen has sent sales people to our house four times this spring.

Four. Times.

I have to admire their persistence, but people, please. I have two small napping kids and a big barky dog who loses her mind if anything with a heartbeat sets foot on our property. Can we please, please end it, already?

(Yes, I called them, and yes they said they'd take me off the list, and yes I expect to see them again Monday).

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I had my first snarky drive-by comment today. That makes me feel like a real blogger!!

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I have a confession to make. I live in Indiana. That narrows the field of possible Amys (Amies?) down from 300 million to about 6-1/2 million, but I'm ok with that, because I want to talk about the election.

Indiana's primary is not until May 6. This means that we typically matter about as much as Guam in the whole presidential primary game. But not this year. This year we matter! We matter a lot!!

And we are not rising to the occasion.

Don't get me wrong, I love my state. I've lived here all my life and can't imagine living anywhere else. One of these days (soon?) I'm going to find the essay I wrote in another forum about the state of Indiana, and post it here.

But we Hoosiers are not used to the national spotlight. We're really not. We are the quintessential flyover state. We make Iowans, what with their fancy caucuses (cauci?) look downright cosmopolitan.

So, inevitably, when the glare of the national spotlight falls on this great state, we are either driving way too fast, or looking like complete idiots (sometimes both at the same time). Seriously, I cringe every time I hear Jon Stewart mention Indiana, because I know it's coming again. The mocking! Oh, the mocking!

But I maintain that some of the smartest people I know live and work and think in Indiana. We just aren't used to living, working, and thinking on camera. We are used to being ignored by the national media, and we like it that way. So, when you turn a camera on us and start asking us questions (or, God forbid, letting us ask questions), we tend to make asses of ourselves. We really don't mean to do it. We're actually, for the most part, very kind, friendly, and respectful folks. But the cameras, they make us kinda twitchy.

So as the nation focuses its attention on us, if we happen to make the whole Florida-during-the -2000-election thing look like a Mensa meeting, go easy on us, ok? Eventually things will return to normal, we'll have a nominee, and you can go back to ignoring us, unless it's Memorial Day weekend. Then we'll let you park on our beautiful lawns.

(See how I brought that full circle there? That's the kind of excellent writing that you keep coming back for. I know.)

3 comments:

Rhea said...

Nice finish! I'm impressed you brought that post full circle. That's talent, girlfriend.

I saw your comment on All Things BD's site and came to check you out.

Also saw your snaky comment posted and loved your response. Assholic? That's a new word for me. lol Love it!

Have the T-shirt said...

You forgot football! We are not just about driving fast here in Indiana. The national spotlight beats down on us every football season too, and we usually look like a bunch of idiots then too!

And by the way, I thought *I* was the loser blogger, not you ( I definitely was the oldest blogger present the other night). You? You rock. YOU sang Lady Marmalade. You can't get much cooler than that!

Anonymous said...

Here in Ontario, Canada (I wonder how many Shawnas that narrows the field to?) the government has just introduced legislation to ban cosmetic pesticides. I wonder what that'll do to the number of door-to-door lawn-treatment salespeople. Lawns will look less "perfect" (not that I think an even layer of grass is that much to write home about) so there might be more business for those companies. But I'm thinking the companies that rely on the pesticides will be in real trouble.