Is the grass always greener?

Today, I'm thankful.  We have so much.  Sometimes, too much.

I remember being a kid and thinking my friends always had it better.  As an adult, I've learned the real stories from my friends or my parents as to what was really going on in those "'better than ours" homes.  In some cases, it was about the same as what we had... but rarely, actually better.

As an adult, I find myself lured by the "perfect" lives of the stay at home mom's on  TV or those self-employed moms on TV... but no one I know has that perfect rosy life.  We all have days where we eat pasta, because it's what we can afford.  We all have days where we send our normally sweet-tempered kids up to their rooms for vile behavior.  We all have times when we wonder, "what was I thinking marrying this guy and having kids with him this is absolute chaos?" (we've also all concluded, we weren't really thinking, because if we did the human race would have become extinct long long ago). 

And when I do feel lured by the perfect TV lives, I also remind myself, no one every goes potty on TV (I've seen it once in a very bizarre foreign film).  I'm not saying I want to "watch" people go to the bathroom, I get enough of that with the kids leaving the door open.  What I'm saying is... we all go potty and everybody's poo stinks.  That's real life. 

But I seriously did have a different point here.  I'm sure you've seen the recent blogs obsessing with my ability to be a friend and struggling with processing all the challenges my friends are going through.  Today, one more "holy cow" bomb was dropped on me and I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this very sad situation. 

It got me thinking... here I think my friends are better off because they aren't going through what I'm going through... but in reality, they've got their own set of horse pucky to deal with.  And as I wonder about who's grass is greener... it got me thinking about how things look in the summer around here.

One neighbor is retired and mows his lawn almost twice a week (his driveway is always meticulously shoveled as well).  He has hands DOWN the best yard around.  He's older, he's retired... he's already dealt with the dandilions and is reaping the benefits of his hardwork. 

Another neighbor... she's the dandilion spreader.  She hand picks the dandilions out of the grass-- often after they've seeded the rest of our lawns.  She also mows her lawn in stages throughout the week-- about every other day, she's mowing a section.  But she's somewhere in the middle... she's figuring out the best way to get the dandilions out of her lawn so she can enjoy it.

And then there's my lawn... after 3 years, we've finally had the dead trees in our front lawn removed and culled out 2 overgrown pine trees.  Patches of our lawn have been reseeded and hopefully will grow in lush in the spring.  We hired out the mowing because with Steve's hours and my allergies, it doesn't get done without taking away from family time.  It's worth the money.    And that puts us at the bottom of the green grass list... our lawn is "under renovation," much like our lives  right now.  We've had to make choices and deal with years of unattractiveness and now we have to regrow... yep, that's us. 

The grass may be greener next door but they've done their work and we are just starting.  We don't really know what they've had to go through to get their pretty green lawns, but we can see them working on it.  I guess if I want the greener grass, I need to do the work. 

I think maybe that's why so many friends are in "same but different" boats as we are right now... we're all in the renovation phase.  Which brings me to the this year's theme... be the building... it's hard to be under renovation, especially when some days you feel like a luxury hotel complex who's financial backer ran out of funding.