Time to put away the yard stuff, which if I'm being honest is OK by me

An empty yard...my favorite kind

This is about the time of year when Terry, Jack and I gather up the summer stuff around our yard and put it into storage in (and above) our garage.

While this isn't the most fun of chores, it's also one that doesn't faze me unduly. I can take or leave all of the outdoorsy activities that many of my fellow North Coasters immediately dive into once things warm up in May or June.

It's not that I don't like being outside. It's just that, when it's 80- or 90-some degrees around here, I would rather be in my air-conditioned living room than sitting on my deck.

Speaking of that deck, I mentioned here a couple of months ago that we got a new one. It's pretty nice. When we had Chloe's PhD celebration party at our house in September, several people made a point of complimenting us on it.

Yet you very likely won't catch me sitting on the deck other than for occasional outdoor dinners and the even more occasional family movie night where we project a movie onto my father-in-law's old slide screen.

I very willingly worked to help pay for it, but the deck is more a Terry and Jack thing than it is for me.

Same for our backyard fire pit. If my housemates want to go out and have a fire in the summer, I'll do it. But I almost never initiate the idea.

You could also put a hammock in our backyard and I would seldom use it, if ever.

As a Gen Xer, I spent a lot more time outside when I was growing up than my kids did. But that experience has not translated into adulthood. I just...well, I'm not an outdoorsman in any real sense of the word.

I don't even run outside anymore. I do all of my exercising at the gym.

My kids are uniformly bitter that, when they were little, I would never consent to getting a trampoline or a pool. The truth was, I didn't want to mow around the trampoline, and I didn't want to have to take care of the pool. 

Those aren't the best reasons, admittedly, but I'm just being honest with you.

My daughter Melanie will tell you that I "hate luxury and joy." She said those words to me a couple of months ago, and she was only half-kidding.

Maybe one quarter kidding.

I would counter that I very much embrace luxury when it's offered to me. And I'm as joyful as the next guy.

It's just that I prefer the kind of luxury and joy that comes with a roof over my head and a functioning HVAC system.

Ask yourself, is that so wrong?

(I'll be in the living room if you want to come and explain your answer.)