Retire the Weekend Warrior?

     I'm starting to think it might be time to pay someone to mow my yard!
     The first problem you will discover is starting the riding mower. In order to make the silly thing start, you have to connect it to the battery charger. Almost from the time we bought the mower, Michael has had Use the charger to start the mower. As time has gone on, the battery won’t work without charging it for several hours first. This means you have to plan ahead for mowing – no spontaneous “I’d better get the mowing done before the rain hits tonight!” (Not that we have much rain in Texas)
     If you are lucky enough to get the mower running, the actual mowing has never been an easy job. Our house is up on a little hill and the incline is very steep. The riding mower works if you start on the top and go down which means you have to make lots of round trips. A riding can’t go up the hill. Of course there is always the push mower but that gets tiring very, very quickly and in the heat of summer over heating is even more of a possibility with the push mower. I do have a self-propelled mower but it’s still a lot of work!
     This is my second summer to take care of my yard. Over that time, I’ve had problems.

• Got the mower stuck and couldn’t get it out. Luckily, a friend happened to drive by and helped me get it out.
• Mower has completely stopped because the blades were so bogged down from grass. Smoke was coming out of the engine (called the neighbor to help that time)
• Couldn’t get the self-propelled mower to start (Dad took it home and worked his “magic.”)
• Couldn’t get the gas trimmer to start (Dad bought a new filter)
• Couldn’t get any of the grass mowing devices to work – riding mower not charged & bad gas

     Today might be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. As I have found dead limbs, I have either put them on my car hauler trailer or on top of the cellar. As I was mowing past the cellar, a limb was sticking out and I needed to move it. Not a problem! I got off the mower after setting the brake so that the engine wouldn’t die. The limb wouldn’t move so I started to attempt to break it. As soon as it broke though, another limb popped up into my face! It hurt but the next thing I knew, blood was gushing from my nose and I thought it was broken. While applying pressure to my nose, I drove the stupid riding mower back into the carport before I killed the engine.
     The good news is that I didn’t break my nose. I now look like there’s a tick on the end of my nose. There’s a scratch down the right jawline and another scratch down my upper lip
The next several days should be interesting. I’m not sure there’s enough makeup in my house to cover this up. And really, is it worth trying to cover it up? I don’t think it’s worth trying to cover it up. Oh well, another lesson learned! At least, I hope I’ve learned something from this recent adventure of the “Weekend Warrior!”


(By the way – anybody want to volunteer to mow my yard?)