Whenever I am gone for long periods of time, I ask Nick how the time was spent. He always rattles off a million things that he did while I was away and how accomplished he made the time.

Nick woke me up at 4am this morning to say good-bye as he departed with 16 other folks from our parish to go on a mission trip to El Salvador.

I told him, “You better come back good as new with no swine flu or anything.”

Translation: Hurry back because I’m pathetico and miss you mucho.

Nick was active up until the day before his trip. His project before he left was to treat our lawn. I have about as much interest in our lawn as I do in car maintenance. (That’s zero, in case you’re wondering…) So yesterday we headed off to local hardware store to buy whatever it is that makes your lawn green, pretty, and bushy.

I always marvel at how honest Nick is with total strangers. The sales associate who helps us is always the same. It’s a nice 50 some year old man with a friendly face and dirty hands…like he was just cleaning the garage or something, and I think he recognizes us as the couple who never know what the hell they’re doing and once he starts explaining the process of how to fix anything in your household, the wife wanders away to look at the deck furniture and BBQ grills.

But, without fail, Nick has no issue with letting the Mr. Hardware know for the umpteenth time that we are clueless, helpless, and young. He begins with the same line, “Well, we just bought our first house and we know NOTHING about it.” He then emphasizes the NOTHING with a horizontal strike in the air with his stretched out hand.

I nod in the background.

Once he begins saying, “Treating your lawn can be compared to how humans eat. We eat three times a day, lawns need to be fed every 5-6 weeks….” I zone out.

And just like that, my thoughts lead me away and I find myself wandering around, sticking my head underneath the new and shiny grill covers, imagining when we will have our first BBQ.