The Race is On!

Every Saturday lately it seems I am racing them. It's difficult. Me and my filthy CRV against a legion of Professional Families.

These are not your average family members, setting up inflatable kiddie pools in the driveway, burning some stuff on a BBQ and calling it a weekend.

Professional Families are the kind that drive Professional Family Vehicles (SUV, probably too large, many ear phone jacks, DVD players and climate zones across the back two rows of seats). They take Saturday very seriously. There is little league to attend, hot dogs to sell at the fundraiser, turkeys to fry at the tailgate.

This is great, these are probably the high achiever kids that will go to Yale or whatever. Great, good for you. Someone has to keep the crappy economy going.

But.

We come into uncomfortable contact at the ball field.

"Why is that girl in her filthy clothes and filthy CRV here? Is she going to get filth on my recently waxed Surburban? Or young Ashton's bleach-clean baseball uniform?"

I'm sure it made sense on paper. They needed a place to put the composted mulch. It's the yard waste mulch that's available for free. While looking for a place to give it out, they saw they had a community ball complex in the middle of suburbia. Why not dump the mulch there? In the ball field's parking lot?

And so we come into uncomfortable contact. Filthy garden girl in her filthy garden clothes who shovels mulch into her CRV (which soon also becomes filthy) invades the tailgaters and coaches and children with iPhones and generally the Republic of Suburban Professional Families.

I try to get there first. If I don't then the sporting event spectators generally wedge their large vehicles all around my free mulch pile, making loading difficult and generating derisive looks over designer sunglasses. I think half of them are unaware of the free mulch program and think I am stealing it.

The park opens it's electronically timed fences at 8am. Right around when the first pitch is scheduled. But if you know nothing of Professional Families, you should know that they are on time. A punctual lot.

So if it's Saturday at 8am, the race is on!

A garden journal note: mulched more of the backyard path. One more load should complete it!