Thursday, January 28, 2010

A Picture

So for the adoption they needed a picture of the front of our house. For most of you, this is probably not a big deal...for us, it really is.

Because you see we don't have a garbage system, thus we certainly don't have a recycling system. My "system" is boxes on our front porch marked things like "plastic" "paper" "cans", etc. Note: Zach hates this system, hates, hates, hates this system. As he says, "I'm happy you want to save the environment but seriously."

And seriously, I deserve that. From time to time I let it get out of hand so much so that our front yard has a random Tombstone cardboard loitering around. Again, Zach hates this.

To my credit, I'm saving the flippin' planet.

I digress, they needed a picture. I searched (half-heartedly) for a picture of the house in better times. Preferably with green grass, kids and dogs running amok with smiles on their faces, things like that. No luck. So I trotted my happy butt outside and took one today.

When I looked in the viewfinder I noticed 2, rather large, empty cases of beer.

"Tariku, can you move those silver cases off the table?"
"You mean the beer cases?"
"Yes, Tariku, the beer cases."
"Where should I put them?"
"Behind the tires, just hide them."

You'll notice there are any number of things wrong with this scenario. Which, my dear friends, is more troubling to you? That my son knows what a case of beer is, that we have a table (and chairs) on our porch or that I have 4-count them-4 tires on my front porch?

And it's a 70-ish year-old structure. And it's at camp, where no one sees my "recycling center".

Do you think they can put a note on there: "May not look like much but this house is home to a family who is saving the planet and having a crapton of fun doin' it?"

How would one translate that into Amharic?

For your viewing pleasure (after the removal of alcohol consumption evidence):

6 comments:

Cindy said...

: )
That was an awesome blog post Tesi. It made me laugh and laugh. Good work on saving the planet!

Adam said...

What a great post!!! I had a good laugh and it is to your credit that you are saving the planet.

Andrea said...

Hey it's all worth it when you are having a crapton of fun doing it! ;o) LOVE it!

Erica Jo (mamasweetpea) said...

Too Funny!!! How exciting to even have the chance to worry about what the front of the house looks like!

Chatter said...

I had to chuckle at this one Tesi. I was determined my children would not know what beer was and of course even Biruk, with his small vocabularly, pointed to the beer can in the recyling and said "beer mama, beer". What??

Beth said...

This post made me laugh out loud for so so many reasons. Seriously I need Jared to read your recycling system because he hates hates mine and it is really nothing compared to yours! Loved the image of a random Tombstone box in your yard and of course the beer. But that is coming from someone whose two years old, who don't say much, scream, "Beer!" "Wine!"

PS Your house is great!