July 4, 2015 - Bribery Is Alive and Well; And It’s Living at My House

By Joan Whetzel

 

 

Well, it’s summer. The hottest time of the year. And, as usual, we have some outdoor tasks to work on, besides the usual mowing and edging.

 

For one, the HOA decided to complain about some mildew on the exterior of our house. I thought we got rid of it all. But the (bleep)ing Home Owner’s Association says we have some more. The only thing we could find that could remotely construed as mildew, is upstairs, near the windows. The only way to get to it, is to open one of the upstairs windows and climb out onto the roof to scrub it off. Then have somebody in the front yard hand up the hose – with the spray nozzle attached - so that it could be rinsed off. My daughter and I were not thrilled with this. Turns out, all we had to say was “climb out the window and onto the roof” for my 10 year-old granddaughter to break into a fiendish grin, complete with evil glint in her eyes. She climbed out the window with the greatest of ease and pranced around the roof scrubbing and rinsing walls like there’s nothing to this chore. Oh, did we fail to mention to her that this was a chore? Well, I guess if nobody tells her, she’ll still think it’s fun.

 

Well after the lawn work and house cleaning, we went to get the last load of rocks to complete our rock garden. The 10 year-old was not particularly interested in helping with this one. Lugging heavy rocks, definitely sounds like a chore. So here’s where the bribery really kicks in. We told her we’d buy a few cans of spray paint – her color choice – and she could spray paint a few of the rocks to scatter randomly throughout the rock garden. She’s enamored with the idea of contributing artistically to the yardwork (i.e. planting flowers) so this peaked her interest. We would also bring home her favorite fast food lunch – this month it’s Chick-Fil-A.  We also promised a trip to the pool when the rock gardening was done.

 

So after lunch, we set back to work. The rock garden is all laid now. It includes many, many bags of plain brown rocks, one bag of red lava rocks (by demand of the 10 year-old) strewn around, and a smattering of painted rocks in coral, turquoise, and shiny clear with glitter that make the rocks kind of look like opals when the sun hits them right. Pretty cool! (Pictures will be uploaded to my Facebook page.)  And yes, the 10 year-old got her trip to the swimming pool. Not that my daughter and I minded much. We worked up enough of a sweat that the cool water felt good.