Mow Better Blues

Remember when you were a kid and you just couldn't wait to be old enough to shave every day? (or put on make up, or shave your legs, or whatever other "adult" level task you were looking forward to) And remember how you finally reached that time and then you were all like "Yeah, I get to shave every day!' , and after some more time passed you realized, "Hey, this shaving every day stuff is kind of time consuming. And sucks"? And then you started to let your facial hair grow a little more between shavings, and then you had a beard going and you woke up one morning and found yourself looking like that guy from The Hangover, Zach Gafilix.....Galfilikaki...Gandalfilinda....Grizzly Adams? I sure do. And that's kind of how I feel about my lawn.

Let me begin by saying that my current abode is the second home I've purchased. The first home I bought was a condo. It was nice and homey and made me feel like some kind of feudal land owner, but as anyone who's ever lived in a condo can tell you (back me up, Terry) it's not the same as owning your own house. First off, they mow the lawn for you. Secondly, if something bad happens, like you get carpenter ants in your wooden deck, they fix it for you (back me up again, Terry). That is, after all, why you pay homeowners' dues. When I did finally make the move from the condo to my current home four years ago, one of the attractions was. . .

MY VERY OWN YARD

For me, the novelty of this lasted about six months. Six sweaty, gruelling, miserable months. Then I was over the whole, "I have a yard thing."

The pain began when I found a lawnmower, a nice YardMan -- self-propelled, too, at a garage sale. It was marked for $175 dollars. The lady selling it let me start it up and try it out a bit to make sure it worked. I offered $125. She gladly accepted, and I was on my way with my (sort of) new mower. I drove all the way home with a smile on my face, so pleased with the great deal I had gotten. I was totally oblivious to the fact that this green and yellows thing in the back of my mini-van was really a rolling, self-propelled, self-bagging gate to Hell.

Before I go much further, let me say that I am not opposed to hard work in general, or yard work in particular. Growing up, I did more than my fair share of things around the house. As the youngest, I was the last to get a job, so I had several extra years of mowing my parents' lawn. Really, I did a lot of the mowing, tree-trimming, etc. because my brother "worked on the computer" doing data entry for my dad's business. Since my family reads this blog, and since these events happened some 25 years ago or so, I'd just like to point out that my brother was actually playing games on the computer, not "doing work." He once told me, "The work takes me like 15 minutes. The rest of the time I play Wizadry." That's right, Fred, you paid Steve good money to earn enough experience points to move his 14th level Elven Cleric up to level 16. When you think about it, that's like getting double paid. But that's water under the bridge. Thanks to my brother's shenanigans, I mowed the family's one acre plot quite a bit. The difference then was that we had a riding mower. I got on, put on my Sony Walkman headphones, popped in my favorite RATT cassette, and the mowing was done in no time and with very little effort and/or pain.

Nowadays are a drastically different. The drudgery of following along behind the mower is not only time consuming, but mind-numbing at best. The thing I hate most about my yard (after the weeds of course) is that it is shaped weird. I live on a court, so my house has a lot shaped like a piece of pie. The front is the pointy end. It takes all of 20 minutes to mow on a slow day. The problem is the backyard. Since the front yard is the pointy piece of the pie, that means the backyard is the crust side of things. With pie-shaped pie, I enjoy the crust part because it is the most delicious. In pie-shaped yard mowing, it is a horrible part. Because the house is on the lot, too, the backyard has a fat part, then a skinny part, and then a really fat part. The really fat part of the yard is the worst. After mowing this prime piece of fat-skinny-fat real estate, I am usually soaked with sweat and my back hurts. I've often contemplated getting a riding mower now that I have a yard, but I've come to realize that it might actually take longer to mow with a riding mower because of all the twists and turns. I'd also like to point out that in addition to mowing one's own yard, one is also responsible for weed-eating one's own yard, and picking up dog poop in one's own yard.

However, like shaving (or putting on make up for some of you), mowing is a necessary evil. So there I am once a week, toiling away behind my now semi-self-propelled mower keeping my grass at a uniform height and cursing continuously under my breath. I've tried popping in the ear plugs of my iPod loaded full of my favorite RATT songs to listen to while I mow, but the mower is so loud I can't hear the iPod that well. My only saving grace is to finish up and come into the house and see my son, Lukas. My son who is always so glad to see me, and who rarely fails to tell me "Dad, the lawn loosk good." My son who will some day in the near future be mowing my lawn for me. Mowing the lawn while I do hours of "work" on the XBox.

Until next time, Excelsior true believers!!!