The Grapefruit of Wrath

I'm STILL home in AZ, but I can't really complain. I'm able to work remotely here in the amazing 60+ degree weather. I hike everyday. And my only other responsibility (which is self mandated) is that I've been grocery shopping and cooking dinner every night for my mom. It's actually been quite enjoyable. I've learned that while interacting and bonding with the Snowbirds when out hiking and grocery shopping on mid-week mornings while everyone else is tied to a desk—that I will make a kick ass retired person.

When working remotely—you inherently get your work done faster. It's not as easy to procrastinate by puttering around someone else's house. Quite frankly it'd be a little weird—especially since these aren't my drawers to needlessly sort through—although I am guilty of "accidentally" removing all of the god awful, high-waisted Mom Jean's from my mom's closet. I keep telling her that Clinton and Stacy told me to do it and that she will one day not only forgive me, but thank me.

So, I've been looking for ways to fill my days. Hence the new interest in hiking and rejuvenated interest in knitting and maybe blogging… Yesterday I decided I would do my mom a favor and pick all the grapefruit from the trees in her backyard. I know it's one of her least favorite things to do (god damned thorns) and heck, I have time. Plenty of time.

I picked and bagged over 200 grapefruit, and was pierced by the evil trees 14 times. There are still 100 grapefruit on the trees that I couldn't even dream of reaching—so we'll let those become someone else's problem.

Now, there is no way that 2 people can even attempt to eat 200+ grapefruit and not develop some sort of health condition. In honor of all the New Year's Resolutions being set, I was inspired to Google the Grapefruit Diet—and yeah, that's clearly a no go.

My mom lives in a quaint little community on a golf course, that is 50% retirees and 30% young families and 10% families in the process of building a new house and renting from one of the retirees that didn't make it out here this season. All of the mailboxes in the neighborhood are grouped together and it gives it a creepy Wisteria Lane quality. More research on this will follow, but I have learned that every time I venture out to get the mail that I can see movement behind the neighbors' curtains and shutters and I'm greeted by at least two of them that just happened to "pop" out to get the mail and then barrage me with at least 15 minutes of chit chat. Alas this is where the kernals of neighborhood gossip begin! So, mom thought it would be nice to put the bags of grapefruit out on top of the community mailboxes for all the neighbors. Brilliant idea I thought.

So, yesterday I dropped approximately 180 grapefruit off at the community boxes. Today when I left for my run I noticed that ALL of the bags were gone. So I figured:
A. The Neighbors actually took them
B. We violated some neighborhood HOA code and some ninny removed them
C. Maybe the mailman or workers in the 'hood picked them up

Either way – grapefruit: dealt with.

Then about a mile down the road I began to notice an excess of grapefruit skin along the golf cart path…hmmm, now everyone here has tons of citrus trees in their yards so it's not uncommon to see a random peel or mutilated orange here and there—but what I noticed was a suspiciously ri-donkulous amount of grapefruit. I rounded the bend that leads to an underpass for the golf carts and I stopped dead in my tracks.

In front of me were 4 saguaros (yes, the tall cacti in the roadrunner cartoons that look like a penis with arms) and they had been completely assaulted!! Used and abused for target practice by the neighborhood 'tweens. Apparently our neighborly gesture actually just was not so benign—we provided the ammo for the Grapefruits of Wrath…