How to be a half-assed homeowner.

Brought to you by your guide in half-assery, Cha Cha!

1. Revel in the glorious weather this weekend. Realize, too, that this is most likely the last nice weekend in several months.

2. Make big and somewhat overzealous plans for yard work. Yard work in the yard that you have basically ignored all year.

3. Saturday morning, realize that you must watch the 11:00 Iowa game in lieu of getting an early-ish start on the yard work.

4. Become despondent and depressed when your beloved Hawkeyes fall.

5. Take your heartache out on the leaves that coat every surface in your yard. Also exert your dominance over the volunteer trees along the fence line that were once volunteer trees, but since you've ignored them for a year have settled in, grown hearty, and are now receiving mail at your address.

6. Wonder who, exactly, Lil' Frankfurter thinks is going to open the door when he cries for someone to let him back in the house, despite the fact you're at the other end of the backyard.

7. Realize you've been working for hours and hours and hours because it has gotten dark.

8. Go inside and see that it's only 5:00. Be sort of depressed, but promise to hit the yard hard on Sunday.

9. Check voicemail. Receive an invite to brunch. Realize that only losers skip brunch to work in the yard.

10. Do some stuff, go to bed, wake up barely in time to make it to brunch. Enjoy brunch.

11. Come home from brunch with barely enough time to get ready for yoga class. Decide that the yard will still be there after yoga and that yoga will make you so happy.

12. Go to yoga. Be so happy.

13. Come home. Fight the urge to take a nap. Eat some yogurt instead. Then go outside to hit that bitch hard. Plan to dig all the grass out of the landscaping, artfully organize that black sheet stuff around the landscaping so grass can't grow through, and then cover the whole shebang with mulch.

14. Remember that digging grass up out of landscaping is a giant pain.

15. Be sort of delighted when you realize that the ugly-ass evergreens in front of your house are not only ugly, but also sort of dying. Decide they will all need to be replaced in the spring. Decide that this means you can totally pull a little grass from around the landscaping, then just cover the rest of the mess up with some mulch, because you have seven bags of mulch in your garage and as long as they are in your garage, you can't park your actual car in the garage and this is unacceptable.

16. Be happy with your half-assed plan until you look up and realize that in your three years of homeownership, you've never once cleaned your gutters. Realize that it's obvious. Decide that having an entire ecosystem popping its ugly head out of your gutters does not bode well for your overall curb appeal.

17. Pull some grass. Be surprised when it gets dark at 5:00. Realize, too, that you've been bending down, ass-to-street, in yoga pants, for a couple of hours. Decide that the darkness is not a bad thing. Throw down some mulch.

18. Give up. Decide homeowners are losers. Go inside, take a shower, and eat Rice-A-Roni.