I Fought The Lawn

The lawn lost, actually. I burned the hell out of it with too much fertilzer this week. Or if it did win, it did so only by dying, as it's untimely demise has caused me much anguish and likely made me the laughingstock of my closest neighbours.

This thing is only going to work, I think, if I immediately come clean about being a thirty-something suburban white guy living with two (step)kids, one wife and a cat in a white rectangular box. Within the confines of those parameters, I am that everyman you've just conjured up in your head. There's some exceptions to that everyman status, of course (that I don't watch sports and don't really like beer are two variables that immediately come to mind), but for the most part it's true. That's what I am. And what's more, it's what I like being.

It was not always this way, however. A scant two years ago I was a single man, living the life of Riley following the failure of my first marraige, and accountable to no one. I played golf when I chose to, played at cleaning when I felt forced to, ate friend chicken on the couch with impunity. I came and went as I saw fit, and was accountable to no one save for the people who sign my paychecks. Seven hundred-plus days later, I have traded that in for responsibility, parenthood, and homeowner status. Seven hundred-plus days later, I am knee-deep in the married life, having traded my shared apartment in a fashionable district for a three-bedroom house and an instant family.

It's about this change that I Fought The Lawn (thanks for the name, Aggie!) will be about, I think – a record of what I'm seeing in this neighbourhood, from this porch, from this new life. And it is new to me. It's all new, and it's strange and a little scary, and it's sometimes funny and it's sometimes dramatic. Hopefully it'll also be telling, and maybe entertaining.

It started long before my wedding and honeymoon, but it's there that I'll begin. There's just too many details to include here at the start, see, and so I'm not going to try and preface my life for you. Instead, I'll just fill you in as I go along. And my wedding day is as good a day as any to start on.

My name's Tim. I'm married to Tania. I live in the 'burbs, I work a forty-hour week, I water my dying lawn.

And from my experience thus far? It's all more interesting than you might think.

- BC