You see, and here we have yet another fine example why I am certainly not ready to have kids! Case in point: you can’t throw children away and purchase new ones if they get ‘banged up’ a little…

But mind you, ‘banged up’ in this case isn’t exactly bumps, nor bruises, nor even unexpected trips down a lengthy flight of stairs, so for the record, you can put the phone down, for there has been none of that sort of “abuse” going on in my domestic residence! No, my friends – we’re actually talking more along the lines of left out in the hot sun too long, maybe didn’t water as much as I should have, and somehow managed to get itself tangled up in one doozy of a losing battle with some particularly ferocious insects (or one really goofy dog…at this point I’m not sure). That’s right…for those of you who might remember Rex, my joyfully acquired houseplant from last fall, well, let’s just say that Rex is no more.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, or even technically when it happened, but what I do know is that when I returned home the other night, it seemed all too inevitable that Rex had finally met his last match…primarily because his pot had been pulled far away from the building to the other side of the sidewalk by one of my neighbors as an indication that it was ok for the groundskeepers to dispose of him. Appalled as you might imagine, I promptly hauled my baby upstairs into my apartment, where he would take residence on my balcony until I was able to figure out what to do with him. And by the way, just for the record – wet potting soil is really freaking heavy!

So there he sat on my former patio table, wrinkled and disheveled, forcing me to make the untimely decision that I was far to young to make. “Is this really the right thing to do?” I thought. “Who am I to play God?!” I pondered. “Are there any of those ice cream sandwiches left in the freezer???” I wondered. Many a sleepless night was spent entertaining these horrendous quandaries until one night it just came to be too much – I knew what I had to do. The next morning, I made that fateful trip to Wal-Mart…

…to find Rex’s replacement! Well, there’s no point in letting such a nice looking pot go to waste, you know, so I perused those very same aisles of the garden center that I had ever so many months ago, searching high and low for a new plant that both fit my budget and required little maintenance…even littler than before. I finally settled on a nice, green number – I can’t pronounce the species and I’ve already managed to lose the tag, so don’t even bother asking – but I think that we’re going to be very happy together. She fits quite nicely in Rex’s old pot and, as a matter of fact, is actually just a little bit bigger than Rex was, not that size matters or anything! Her name, taken from the whimsical Beverly Cleary character from my youth, is Ramona…but you probably already guessed that from the title of this column!

Now before all of you agricultural activists get all up in arms, let me reassure you that Rex has now gone to a better place…and no, I didn’t actually toss him in the dumpster as previously mentioned. Quite the contrary, he’s actually still sitting in that same spot out on my balcony, albeit in a much smaller pot than before because after trimming away most of the dead foliage, there wasn’t a whole lot left of him, but we’re trying! He now gets watered religiously twice a week, with regular plant food stuff and everything, and I’ve even taken to reading to him in the midnight hours to help him fall asleep – he’s especially looking forward to the new Harry Potter book, probably more than any other plant on the block! Just the other day, I thought I saw a couple of new buds, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens…

And the moral of the story here, kids – don’t get too excited about getting that new dog or parrot in your life, unless you’re ready to recite tales of wizards and dragons in its ear long after the buzz has worn off!