The end of the lawn mower saga

I have reported lawn mower adventures in earlier Notes (May 11 & 14, 2010). I did take the mower with the wandering knob back, waited forever while the fellow at Lowes' first tried to put on another knob that might not come unscrewed while I was mowing, and finally dug up another mower "out back" (the one I had purchased had been the display model, supposedly the last of its kind). The reason this one was "out back" was due to "missing parts," but when I said "Uh-oh," the guy assured me it was just the grass catcher, and since I had the one from the original mower I was all set.

So Mr. Lowes helps me get the new mower back into my car (I had had to have the woman next door help me get it in for the outgoing trip, as it is simply too heavy and unwieldy for me to manage alone), and when I got home I eased it awkwardly to the ground (that I can do on my own), and wheeled it down the slope to my back yard, and around to the basement door. In the basement I plugged it in so it could charge, and the next day I wheeled it out and started mowing the lawn.

And the knob fell off.

Well, hell. Obviously it was a design flaw. I was both disgusted and depressed. Was this thing made in Thailand? (See discussion of foreign-made air-conditioners, in my very first Note of June 8, 2008). Well, my lawn was terribly scraggly; I had to go ahead and mow the damn thing, trying to keep an eye on the knob, so as to catch it before it came completely unscrewed and fell off. Frequent pauses while mowing to reach down and tighten the screw. And a couple of times I failed to notice, and the knob fell off, and I only realized it because the handle started coming apart. So then I would have to go back and search in the grass for the knob.

And, as had been the case before, it took me three sessions to get the lawn completely mowed; I simply was not up to doing it all at once. Then I went into a blue funk, trying to decide what to do. Write an irate letter to the company? (Black and Decker, by the way. I thought they had good products!) I've long since learned that writing to a company can be very effective, but really, what could they do for me, except tell me to go get a replacement...which would have the exact same problem.

Should I take the damn thing back to Lowes' and just get my money back? Or should I go to the hardware store and see if I could get a knob that would stay on? Did they sell loose knobs at hardware stores? I really did like the mower, except for this problem, and really liked the idea of not having to pay someone to do my lawn.

My indecision was a decision in itself; I did nothing for several weeks. My landlord's son mowed my lawn for me once without my even asking; I later realized it was probably because John was again showing the house next door to prospective renters, and would prefer the lawn that lay in front of the parking area not look like a meadow.

Finally, the day came when I really had to mow my lawn again. Girding my loins for the Battle of the Wandering Knob, I got the front lawn mowed, and part of the back, when one of those times I failed to catch the knob before it fell off it managed to fall off in the path of the mower. And crunch, crunch, no more knob.

And thus, my decision was made for me. I looked at my receipt and saw that the 30-day no-questions-asked return period was long since past. But I called Lowes' anyway, and asked for a "manager with lots of power," and told the guy my tale of woe. And he said, "Well, m'am if you want to bring it back, you certainly can." "And get my money back?" "Yes, m'am."

Yay!!! I was out the door in a flash, trying to trundle the mower back up the slope to my car, with a handle that was trying to come apart in my hands. And then, of course, I couldn't get it into the car, and of course there was no one home next door. Well, a woman's gotta do what she's gotta do, so I walked two houses up, knocked on the door, and asked the middle-aged lady who came to the door if there were someone with muscle in the house who could help me put a lawn mower in my car. She told me no one else was home, but she'd help me. And she did. And I took the damn thing back, and got my money back, and that's the end of my trying to do something I didn't want to be doing anyway.

Looking for an explanation

Why can't things be the way they're supposed to be? Why are so many events/situations/purchased products/people not quite as they should be? Why is perfection such an impossibility? We all know that it is, but why?

Turns out there's something wrong with my new lawn mower (besides the fact that I don't have the correct instruction manual for it). A knob that holds one part to another part keeps coming off as I'm mowing. This is the third thing that has been not quite right about this "purchased product"-- the first having been that Lowe's sold me a lawn mower without an instruction manual, the second, that they then supplied me with the wrong manual. This is a long way from perfection.

And now I have to take the damn thing back, which makes the situation painfully far from perfection. Roll it out my basement door, around to the side of the house, up the slope to the driveway, fold the thing up, heft it into my car, make the 20 minute drive to Lowe's, heft it out of my car, do my share of waiting at Customer Service (I already did a lot of waiting when I went back for the manual which turned out to be the wrong manual), with who knows what outcome, since this was the last one of this model they had.

I did at least get my lawn mowed. Took three days, about 40 minutes each day, since my stamina is almost non-existent, and since the grass was so high, and on the second day so wet, that I had to take a stroke back for each stroke forward, in order to get it all. But you know, except for the damn knob that I kept having to go back and look for in the grass when I would realize it had fallen off again because the handle had started coming apart again, I was really pleased with the thing. Cordless electric is definitely the way to go. But now what's going to happen?

And then there are my new curtains. You remember the bathroom curtains Cozy Cottage was going to make for me? They were ready in only a week, rather than the two the woman had thought it would take, and they're very pretty -- the fabric goes just fine with my bathroom decor, which I'd been worried about -- but they're too short. In this case, the answer to why something isn't perfect is: I screwed up. My length-wise measurement was off by half an inch. But actually there's one other thing that's "not quite right": the hem is too wide. When we were discussing how I wanted the curtains made, and the woman said, "And you'll probably want a five or six inch hem, to give it weight," I was taken aback -- that seemed mighty wide to me -- but I figured she was the expert. But as it turns out the curtain is so small, because the window is so small, that the wide hem is notice-ably out-of-proportion.

So I've decided I have to take the curtains back, too. Have her increase the length, and narrow the hem, undoubtedly for an additional charge. What price the urge to perfection.

Oh, but it's so gorgeous in our neck of the woods now. The faint green haze that could be seen in all the trees a week ago has been replaced by lush green foliage. The trees are back! The green is back! All the lilac bushes are blooming! We've had temperatures in the 60s, and low humidity. If you don't look too closely, this is perfection.

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!