First I have to add it to my bucket list and then I can cross it off.
Today I mowed the lawn for the very first time in my life. I'm 28 years old.
In order to tell this tale, I'll have to back up a little bit. Let's start with childhood. Not only was I a spoiled only child, but I also had asthma. So certain chores were off limits in my mother's eyes. Dusting, vacuuming (dust allergy), and mowing the lawn (grass allergy), to name a few, were out of the question. See, I was really sick from 1-5 years and my mother always feared I still had that in me. As a teenager not wanting to do chores, I couldn't have agreed with her more.
As an adult, I've mostly lived in apartments which means mowing the lawn was again not my problem. However, over a year ago, my husband and I moved into our first home. We agreed that I would take care of the inside and he would take care of the outside. But really, I hire someone to clean our house so Hubby kind of got the raw end of the deal. But, while I've tried to encourage him a lot to hire someone for outside (you know, so I don't have to feel guilty about hiring someone for inside), he insists on doing it himself. It's a pride thing and supposedly, he enjoys it. After my experience today, I can only assume he is high while he does it.
So fast forward to about a month ago. Hubby has been working shift work at the plant for turnaround. What does this mean? A whole lot of crap I don't understand but mostly that he's working 12 hour days, 19 days at a time. Since the days have been getting shorter, he is not getting home in time to do the lawn which recently became a bit of a nightmare to look at--sorry, neighbors.
Side bar: I have a neighbor across the street that literally spends days weeding her lawn by hand. Needless to say, this woman already filed a complaint against us with the HOA. Well, I don't know that for a fact but I know a complaint was put in and I know that she's crazy. So 2+2=4. I was getting a little nervous that someone might say something to the HOA. Heaven forbid, our neighbors actually talk to each other. Rather than do the neighborly thing and come over to make sure everything's alright, their answer would be to report us. BUT I digress.
In order to avoid a potential complaint, Hubby came home early yesterday to mow the lawn. But in typical Houston fashion (even dead smack in the middle of a record breaking drought), it started to down pour literally right as my husband walks through the door. Now, he lost out on the overtime and he couldn't fix the lawn that I can tell he's starting to become ashamed of.
By the way, for the last week, I've been keeping an eye out for our neighbors' lawn services so that I could just ask them to run over the grass for us. Figured I could slip them some cash and it would only take 30 minutes or so, if that. But of course, similar to cops, when I needed them, they were nowhere to be seen. Uggh.
Today, Hubby did the unthinkable. He called me and told me to get prices for a lawn service. ::GASP:: I made a few calls, and quickly learned that the earliest I was going to get someone here was mid-week next week. The truth is the yard needed to be mowed last weekend. So these timelines, even if I get them to come then, weren't going to cut it.
So, in an effort to win Wife of the Year 2011, I put sneakers on and went into the garage to figure out this contraption they call a lawnmower. And the lawnmower won. I could not figure out how the hell to turn that thing on. I rustled through his work bench to see if I could find the manual, but I couldn't. I came inside and checked our filing cabinet for the manual, under Instruction Manuals of course. Nothing. I Googled it and the I YouTubed it.
With my new YouTube knowledge, I headed back outside to give it another try. Nope, still couldn't figure it out. Then I nosed around his workbench a little more and found the manual! The manual was for 4 different models though so then I had to figure out which model we have.
Then I got it to start! YAY!
I went up a small strip of grass, made a circle, and then...
And then...
Then, it stalled and I couldn't get it to go back on. So I had one little patch of grass mowed in a design of course. And not one of those cool designs like on baseball fields. Just a little loop that I stared at and thought how Hubby would say, "Maybe next time you shouldn't try to help."
But then, after MANY tries and probably doing some damage to his precious lawnmower, I got it to go again. And I mowed until it stalled again.
This went on for the next hour and a half. But I eventually got MOST of the front yard done--at least enough to avoid any complaints.
Did I mention it was 90 degrees outside today? How about the fact that our air conditioning was broken?
I was pretty certain I was going to die. But I didn't. So I will be adding, 'Mowing the Lawn' to my bucket list, purely just so I may cross it off.
Wife of the Year better come with some serious jewelry.
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