Oh, that maintenance

I'm so happy! I did it! Actually, I did several things. First I made the difficult decision to actually spring for a lawn mower. I didn't really want to do this. I hate to mow the lawn. It does not fit my self-image. None of my self images, not the Struggling Writer one, or the Starving Librarian one, or the Delicate Flower one. When Micheal and I lived in southern Louisiana, in the big, beautiful brick house out in the country with the acre of lawn, I often had to mow the lawn -- on a riding mower, no less -- because M. would be off-shore for at least three weeks at a time, and the growing season in southern Louisiana does not permit any lawn to go three weeks without being cut. And I would feel so mortified, riding around on that damn miniature tractor, with the occasional car/pickup/18-wheeler flashing by on our country road.

So, I didn't want to have to buy a lawn mower, and spend an hour or so every week or so mowing the lawn. But neither did I want to drop $50 every time I had someone do it, as I have had to do in summers past. I either tended to go too long between "haircuts," resulting in a really shitty looking lawn too much of the time, or if I left it up to the "barbers," found myself having to pay for a weekly haircut, which I simply could not afford.

Then there was the question of what kind of lawn mower to get. I saw some on sale at the local hardware store (which as a matter of fact was the impetous for my beginning to seriously think about this), but not knowing the first thing about lawn mowers, didn't know whether these were a good value. I did contact the fellow who volunteers to mow our lawn at the library, to see if he would be willing to go with me and check them out. He has mowed my lawn for me once (we lugged the library's mower to my house so he could do it), and now I told him that if he were interested, he could mow my lawn occasion-ally for pay. He seemed interested in the second proposal, and indicated his willingness to help me mower-shop, but that was the last I heard from him.

There was also the fact that I didn't really want to have to deal with a gas mower. Getting gasoline from a service station, making sure the mower has enough fuel, and...most of all!...having to pull that damn starter rope to get it going. I've never had good luck with those things, yanking and yanking away, getting nothing but sputtering for my efforts. When Micheal and I lived in Abilene, and had a smaller lawn to mow than the one in Louisiana, we also had an electric push mower. This was great in terms of starting -- just plug it in and turn it on -- but keeping the cord out of harm's way was a big drag. So now I was thinking how I would really prefer to have an electric mower, but really didn't want to have to fight with an extension cord.

Well, my lawn was starting to look like an absolute meadow; I knew I had to take some kind of action, either call the professional barbers, nag at Earl to help me pick out a mower, and then get him to use it, or at the very least get one that I, in a pinch, could use myself. I knew that, whatever a mower might cost me, it would soon pay for itself, in money saved from paying professional barbers (even if I paid Earl, he would take no more than $20 from me, still a savings).

So I started calling around, asking if places had electric mowers. The fellow at Sears, the first place I called (after the hardware store, which had only gas-powered), said, "Plug-in or cordless?" and my ears perked up. "There are cordless electric mowers?" "Yep." So I got the price there (a little steep), and after that, all my calls were for cord-less electric mowers. And I finally found one that was $70 cheaper than Sears' version, at Lowe's. And I went and bought it, and lugged it home, and then called when I discovered there was no instruction manual (I had purchased a display model, as it was the only one at that price left, but I was assuming there were instructions tucked in there somewhere, which proved not to be the case), and I waited three days for the manual that the fellow I talked to said he would send me, and then I went back to Lowes, demanding a manual, and finally getting one for what I suspected was the newer model, which proved to be the case, but even so I managed to figure out what was what with my model, and get the battery charged, and get the thing started, and darned if I didn't get my entire front lawn and part of the back mowed this afternoon, after I got home from work.

The Delicate Flower did it!