Before you start reading, make sure you’ve taken a close look at the accompanying visual. And I’m not talking about the fact that the actual visual is on it’s side. That’s only because I’m a technological moron and I don’t know how to make it right side up. Lean your head sideways and you’ll see what I guess you’d call an enormous potted plant in my backyard. Given it’s positional likeness to a certain tower in Pisa, my husband and I named it the Leaning Plant of Orlando. Now here’s the deal, this plant has been leaning this way for quite some time now, exactly how long I couldn’t tell you. I noticed it a few weeks prior, but there’s a solid chance it had been like that for a while before I noticed. My mom once came over to an apartment I was living at in NYC, and immediately said, Hope, haven’t you noticed that half your ceiling in the kitchen is cracking, probably from a leak above you? The truth is no, I hadn’t noticed, and my reasoning was, why while in the kitchen would I ever look up? If something doesn’t affect my everyday life I pay very little attention to it, and I’m not a neat freak where everything has to look perfect. It’s quite the opposite, frankly I’m a hot mess. If neat freaks are type A, I’m innately type Z, but having a kid I’ve tried to up myself to like a solid M with the ultimate goal being like an, I or J.

So when I first took notice of this leaning plant, I showed Adam, who like me, is hovering around a Type N or O, and didn’t think much of it either. It also helps that we were renting the house so didn’t take much pride or satisfaction in the landscaping in general. However, the owner did pay for the landscapers to come on a regular basis to keep everything in check. So when we noticed a week or 2 went by, clearly the landscapers had come and the plant was still leaning, we thought it was perhaps a bit odd. I know what you’re thinking, why didn’t myself or Adam just push the damn plant upright? It’s a fair question. I could say, there are better things I could be doing with the 30-45 seconds it would probably take, but that would clearly be a bunch of bullshit. The honest answer is, we just didn’t, and then it almost became a thing, like how many times would these landscapers come and not push it up themselves. Something of a stand-off, like in the old wild west, who’s gonna pull their gun first and shoot. Sure one could result in death while the other a more aesthetically pleasing visual, but you get the analogy.

The stand-off continued for weeks on end, and the leaning plant of Orlando continued to lean. It even started to look as if it was leaning on a more severe angle which is when Adam and I took bets on when it would actually fall over. It didn’t. At that point we just appreciated it for what it was. It’s like sometimes you learn to appreciate something a little off or wonky about someone. Like if they have one eye that’s bigger than the other, it becomes endearing and what makes them, them. My nose used to be a little wonky, but when I was 19 I got a nose job. So there goes that theory. Well, it’s endearing on some people. Anyway, at the end of the day, the landscaper’s job is to make the grounds look their best. I don’t think wonky was what they were going for, I think it was just laziness. So landscape dudes, you are the douchebags of the day.