I’m beginning to wonder if anyone else has issues with the equipment used to maintain a neat and tidy lawn or is it just me? I set out with the best of intentions only to have my positive attitude and willingness to conquer squashed by gas powered contraptions!
Last week the mower I thought I had established a quite reliable friendship with ended up turning on me and decided not to mow the front yard. Don reassured me that it was most likely flooded and by the time the lawn was ready to be mowed again, the mower would be ready to roll. My heart believed him but my heart is gullible and very trusting. My head, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as sure. It had some realistic scenarios presenting themselves in the form of little imaginary videos and each one contained a lot of sweat, frustration and some rather colorful words.
With all of the preliminary thoughts expressed I will now proceed with the events that transpired as I attempted to rekindle my faith and friendship with “Half-yard” today.
I opened the shed door and carefully rolled him onto the grass. I checked to make sure there was a full tank of gas and then depressed the primer button 3 times. I walked towards the rear of the mower and took hold of the rope. I gave it a quick pull and much to my amazement, IT STARTED!!!! I began singing praises to Don! He was right and the mower is running! La, la, la, yeah the mower is running! We scooted around trees and up next to the fence but before long I slipped out of crazy mowing fool mode and started pondering the descent into the front yard that was quickly approaching and I began to wonder just how I should go about it. I didn’t want to stop the engine as that is when the trouble began last time so I decided to mow the neighbors yard which would eventually lead me and the mower to our front yard without spewing stones from our driveway all over. This was a splendid plan! I’m so smart and so darn nice. The neighbor would surely appreciate coming home to a nicely mowed lawn after a hard days work and I still felt like I owed him $25 bucks for that chair we now have sitting by our front door so in my opinion, this was a win win situation!
I was able to do all of his back yard and then mowed one strip along his front yard before deciding to move over to our front yard so ours would be completely finished before heading back to finish his. I suppose I needed to prove to myself that the mower was okay now and that it was capable of mowing a whole yard. This plan made so much sense and I could tell that Half-yard was thinking the very same thing. It was obvious we were friends again and the grass was flying and everything was beginning to look so nice….and then….it sputtered. I kept mowing and singing it’s praises and it sputtered again. Quickly I thought of a logical reason for the sputters and decided it could be running out of gas. Eventually the sputtering rendered a complete stop to my mowing and that is how Half-yard got his first nickname. It mows fine in the back yard but gets all weird and dead when we get going out front. I’m sure there is a logical reason…there has to be….right?
After receiving several gulps of gasoline and an air filter check, it still wouldn’t start. It was hot, I was sweating and our yard and the neighbor’s yard looked worse than half a haircut when the trimmer dies. At a moment like this you so hope an alarm goes off and you realize you’re dreaming. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and I decided the “good deed” list in my brain needed a bit of tweaking. Good deeds are generally described as things we do to bring others joy. Mowing cannot, not, not be on my good deed list ever ever again. I can just about hear the response I was going to get. Rather than hearing, “Oh, you shouldn’t have! I would be hearing “I really wish you wouldn’t have!”
I pulled my bewildered self together amidst the incredible mess I had found myself in and assembled a list of my quite limited options. I knew of a mower I could borrow but the independent, pig headed, torture loving part of my brain sent me into the house and sat me in front of the computer and forced me to watch an 8 minutes video on how to remove the carburetor bulb. It was going to require tools I couldn’t find and I knew the straw from our canned air was still lodged inside the CD player so I swallowed my pride and asked how to go about borrowing a mower.
I finished both lawns. I managed to get all of the trimming done as well and no one would ever be able to tell these two professionally coiffed looking lawns required almost everything an independent, pig headed, torture loving woman had in her! Half-yard was rolled back into the shed and as I was sliding the lock into place I decided his new nickname was going to be P.O.S. Perhaps it’s rather harsh but leaving me stranded with two lawns looking like both the trimmer and the barber died in the middle of the haircut just didn’t set well with me.
Life will go on as it always does and I will continue to mow the lawn one way or another and everything will be just fine.
(Please tell me you’re not still trying to figure out what P.O.S. stands for?)