The Astroturf Is Greener
(June 2007) There are acorns on my coffee table. They aren’t there to be eaten; they’re just there because one of the boys in my house -- either my 12-year old stepson or my 42-year old husband -- took the time to bring them in and deposit them there instead of in the trashcan. There are BB gun pellets on that same coffee table, along with a generous scattering of them on the hallway floor that I keep stepping on and that results in my continually doing a deranged sort of sliding dance whenever I enter that part of the house. There’s also a BB pile outside in the backyard. Next to the rusty beer cans that are now embedded with holes. There are clothes piled everywhere: in the basement, on the arm of the living room couch, along the stairs to the second floor, in the guest bedroom, and on my side of the bed. And they aren’t even my clothes. There are mounds of Kleenex on the floor and dishes that made it to the kitchen counter but -- for some unknown reason -- eluded getting into the di...