"Stupid is as Stupid"... OK, some days I'm just plain Stupid!

The other day I received a letter from our local utility company. I opened it while I was walking back to the house from the mailbox. It stated that I had some form of "brush" by my meter and my meter reader could not read it. It also asked if I would remove said "brush".

As I continued to read the letter I stopped at my meter to look at it closer. Granted, I see it everyday- It's on the front of my house right next to the sidewalk up to the door. What a gosh awful place to put such an ugly monstrosity I must add! And because it is SO ugly I decided to grow pretty petunias in front of it this year.

So I stopped, looked at the letter, looked at the meter... And all I kept thinking was what kind of MORON couldn't read THIS meter? Sure, because of the decorative fencing I have up to keep the toddler out of my flower bed, you MAY have to bend forward a bit- But it is still clearly visible!

The more I looked at the meter, the more disgruntled I became. I was SO mad that I went inside the house and grabbed my camera. I took a few pictures of it insisting that I was going to write them a "lovely" letter back with photos - telling them politely to go get bent.

Here are my meter photos:

See? Nothing that I felt warranted a letter from them- Grr!!! Was I mad!

All day long I was stewing... By the time my husband came home, I was REALLY frustrated about it. I didn't want to get rid of my flowers, I tried so hard to hide that ugly area without covering that dumb meter- And yet they were complaining about it! Grrr!!!

So my husband took my letter and read it...

And says...

"They are not talking about THIS meter, they are talking about the GAS meter"

My response: "We *have* another meter?"

He rolled his eyes as he led me to the backside of the house and showed me where the meter in question is located. And this is what I saw:

OMGosh!!!! I was so embarrassed! Talk about eating Crow! Because of the direction my house is situated on our property- When you pull in my driveway, you don't see the "front" of my house- you see the end side of it. The front of our house faces our pasture, and the far end of our house is considered the "back yard". So the back of my house is a very desolate area that hardly ever gets visited. Hence, why I didn't know about this meter. I couldn't believe how worked up I got when clearly they were in the right and I was in the wrong! Now I started to feel bad. I couldn't even SEE the meter, I couldn't imagine having to try and crawl in there to actually read it!

Now I was in a pickle... That huge "bush" you see is a Hydrangea bush. It blooms beautiful huge white pom-pom flowers in the late spring. It has become a tradition to pull off the flowers and have an early summer "snowball" fight. The kids and I have a blast running all over the yard trying to hit each other with them. So I didn't want to cut it down.

So I gave it a "trim"- OK, more like a total hack job!

Oh look!! I *do* have a meter! Guess I won't be hearing from them again...