I can’t tell you how much I dislike the particular South Park episode that made that title a phrase I’ve heard in my house OVER AND FUCKING OVER for years now.

That being said, there is something in doing what you want.

At least I suspect there is.

We lived in Rural Ohio for 7 years. We were at the Appalachian foothills and bordered an enormous Amish community.

A couple times each year, we’d take off for the day and visit the little Amish villages and shops and flea markets and end up coming home with cheese and baked goods.

On the drive there, we would pass a house that sat along a picturesque strip of road that had the front yard just FILLED with plastic yard animals.

I mean filled.

Roosters and ducks and goats and deer and pigs and cows and a dinosaur. ..I’m pretty sure there might have been a dinosaur.

There was a flock of pink flamingos and a family of bears and a wishing well and a shadow figure of a hillbilly chewing on grass and a cutout of an old woman bending over in front of a garden.

That person looked at their yard and said FUCK THIS LAWN!! I WANT COLOR! I WANT ANIMALS! I WANT DIFFERENT OUTFITS FOR MY STONE GEESE!

Perhaps I would not choose to take that route as far as doing what I want. But I hold an odd sort of admiration for that person who chose to go ahead and buck convention and have a plastic barnyard in their front yard.

Since we’ve been in our house, though, I’ve been letting a little more convention go by the wayside each year.

Sure, it makes sense to paint the walls a nice neutral color. But I want red walls and purple walls and yellow and blue walls.

Well, the yellow was hubs choice, I did not make that choice. Still, it was a good one.

So we painted our walls in big, bold colors. I haven’t regretted that decision for a single day.

This year? The deck is changing. We’ve always had somewhat of a flamboyant deck, but this year, we’re going even further.

We’re affixing more lattice to the rails to grow more vines and hang more pictures and fly some flags. We’ll have pepper lights and paper Chinese lanterns and fairy lights.

We’ll have fire and incense and Randy has decided that he also wants pinwheels.

HAHAHAH.

Pinwheels.

He wants a shit ton of those little plastic pinwheels that you get for a dollar and give to your grandkids to run around the yard with until they break or become a weapon. As far as toys go, they’re slightly above slinky in reliability and slightly below slinky in fun and he wants to decorate with them.

I had a small moment when he said he wants to add pinwheels.

Really? It will be cheesy. Just as bad as the animal print duct tape he uses on the deck rails to hold his incense sticks.

We talked a little bit about not worrying about what is at least within shouting distance of what is considered conventional and just doing what we wanted.  Fuck the neighbors, fuck what people think and fuck worrying about changing it all when we want to sell this house.

Randy mentioned his mother and how he always admired that she did what she wanted to do. She didn’t worry about what people thought, she didn’t worry about convention.

She had the best garden. Really. The best in the world.

I miss my mother in law and I miss her garden. At the very least, I can follow her lead and not worry about what I’m SUPPOSED to want and go ahead and go with what I actually want.

One thing I want is for her son to express himself in our surroundings. Not as much as me, let’s not get carried away, but at least somewhat.

I sat back in my chair and looked at the table top that I have inadvertently made multi-colored while painting flower pots and thought, why the fuck not?

I do what I want.

Bring on the motherfucking pinwheels.