Sucks to Have One of Those Days......

Sucks to Have One of Those Days...........


We’ve all had ‘em. One of those days when it feels like you’re skating uphill...in molasses.

Well, yesterday I went to my Dad’s house to cut the grass. It’s a pretty small yard. However, since his death, I’m finding it difficult to go to the house. Well, what that means is that I have neglected cutting the grass. By neglect, I mean that the grass was about waist high. That looks real great in the city!!! My Dad’s neighbor called to “remind” me that if the city comes and cuts the grass, they send out a bill for $500 bucks!

After driving three hours, I got out of the Suburban and into my Dad’s house. I changed clothes and was gearing up to cut the waist-high wasteland. I thought things were going my way when the lawn mower started on the first pull! My Dad’s lawn mower is gas-powered and self-propelled. That bad boy started hacking away grass in a hurry!

As I was zipping along in the front yard, I smelled something funny. Looking down, I saw smoke coming from the engine. I shut her off and checked the oil. Nothing. I filled it up and started her up again. Three minutes later.....smoke. I looked closely at the engine. Oil was pouring out of a crack in the engine. Great. You know me. Joe Gearhead. I wouldn’t know how to fix the thing if I had my own mechanic telling me what to do!

Of course, knowing that you know nothing never stops you from trying. So, there I am, 7:00 pm on a Thursday evening with a lawn mower that is hemorrhaging oil. My Dad’s neighbor comes with tools. He doesn’t know how to use them. Awesome. Dumb and Dumber trying to fix the mower. It becomes apparent after about five nanoseconds that the lawn mower is not going to be fixed. The neighbor asks if I want to borrow his lawn mower. “Yes,” I replied.

He brings over an electric lawn mower with about a thousand foot cord. The cord weighs more than the mower. I plug it in and it makes a little bitty ‘hmmmmmmm’ sound. I push the lawn mower into the waist-high grass and discover it is not self-propelled. In fact, all it seemed to do was push the grass down. When I pulled the mower back toward me, it cut some of the grass. I had to do each swath twice! I think that I could have chewed the grass off faster than I was cutting! Oh, yea, the cord kept falling out of the mower, so there I was trying to push the mower with one hand and hold the cord in the mower with the other hand and keep from running over the million foot cord with the other hand!

Did I mention that the grass was high? So high that I spooked a rabbit. Wildlife in Detroit! I think it was like 1900 AD or so the last time a rabbit was spotted in our neighborhood.

Did I mention that high grass is a breeding ground for mosquitos? Well, let me put it this way, I had two mosquitos land on my nose because every available spot on each arm and leg was being taken up by their blood-sucking relatives!

Three and one-half hours later, I was done with a lawn that used to take me 30 minutes to do with a real lawn mower. Sweaty, beaten-down, and mosquito-infested, I finally hit the shower. You can’t wash off mosquito bites! I stood in the shower telling myself that I really needed to thank my neighbor for lending me his electric lawn annoyer (it didn’t cut the grass, it just really annoyed it). I also had to thank him for the 1000 foot cord and what a neat time I had raveling and unraveling it. Then I looked out at the grass. It looked like the lawn was attacked by a drunk, half-blind barber with dull shears!

Ah, well. I’ll either buy a new lawn mower or invest in goats.

Mosquito-ly Yours,

Blawgerman