Barnmaven

Farewell to thee, my old lawnmower

When we bought the new/old house two years ago, my parents helpfully found an old Sears Craftsman lawnmower for us for $50.  Not a bad price for a lawn mower.  I had to find a grass catcher for it, but it pretty much started on request and had self-propel.  Unfortunately what I did not do for it was change its air filter, and apparently when you live in a place where dust blows through the air almost 365 days a year, you have to actually CHANGE THE AIR FILTER.  Like really.  And since I didn't know that, I didn't do it.

Aside from the unbelievably sandy air, what the Columbia basin offers is an average of 310 days of sun a year and almost unlimited irrigation from the Columbia River, which flows majestically south just a few hundred yards from my house.  I pay, I kid you not, $180 dollars a YEAR for unlimited irrigation in the growing months for my acre and a half.  I could bathe this place in water 10 hours a day straight and it would not cost me a dime more than my twice-yearly $90 irrigation tax.  So we have a butt load of sun and a butt load of water, and just what do you think those of us with grass in our yards net as a result?  You got it.  We mow our lawns TWICE A WEEK or they turn into something you need to cut with a tractor very quickly.

Preparing to go on vacation, lawn mowing was large on my mind.  Even scaling back the irrigation time on the front and back from a half hour to 15 minutes would mean I was only going to dull the growth to, oh, five inches or so.  I couldn't NOT water it.  Its July in the desert.  No water would mean a brown lawn.  This ain't suburbia, not yet (it can't be if you have horses in your back yard) but civilized people do care about their green patch of grass.  So with that in mind, I had a good plan.  Mow the back yard, which grows the fastest, on Friday, mow the right half of the front on Saturday, mow the left half of the front on Sunday and mow the back again on Monday, leave for vacation on Tuesday.  With any luck I would be able to still mow with the bag off when I got back the following Thursday.

I stuck to my plan, all the way until Sunday - and then it happened.  Halfway through the left half of the front yard, happily mowing along, my mower suddenly choked out a cloud of white smoke, gurgled and started to die...and just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the dipstick lurch straight up, and out of the hole it left below, a big BLURP of dirty oil came vomiting out.  Oh. My. God.  How am I going to stick to my perfect suburban lawn mowing plan NOW?  CURSE YOU, LAWN MOWER GODS!!!

I called my friend Jennifer's husband Justin, who is wise about such things as lawn mowers, and asked him if he could help me.  I had a tight schedule to maintain, dammit!  They came as quickly as possible, he looked it over and told me that at first glance, he could tell I needed new O rings, probably more.  He could come pick it up with his truck on Monday.  He got it working passably enough for me to finish the front yard and do the back - but I couldn't use the self-propel function, every time I tried to turn on the gear, the dipstick began wobbling in what I can only describe as a very threatening manner.  "Take the easy way out, girlie, and I'm going airborne again.  Just try me."  I sweated and cursed my way through a manual cycle of the backyard.

Justin showed up the afternoon we were leaving.  As we lifted my lawnmower into the back of his truck, I patted it wistfully and told it to hurry up and get better soon.  We left for New Jersey shortly thereafter.  The lawnmower crossed my mind more than once during the week that followed, but I eased my fears by telling myself that if anyone could make it better, Justin could.

This morning, one day after our return, I called Jennifer.  "How's my lawnmower doing?"  I asked.  "I have good news and bad news," she said, "which do you want first?"  "Give it to me straight up, I'm a big girl.  I can take it."

"Well, the good news is, you get a new lawnmower.  The bad news is, you have to pay for it."

Shit.

Turns out, if you don't ever change the air filter on your lawnmower, all that sand in the air gets into your engine and does a nasty number on your pistons.  When this happens, you don't just need new O rings, baby, you need a whole new engine.  And when you start talking pricing out a new engine, you might as well just buy a whooooollllle new lawnmower.

We bought a Toro with a 22 inch deck, self-propel and electric starter. And its bright red, which means Little Man is more in love with it than he is with his new toy tractor.  And you can bet your britches I'll be changing the air filter on a yearly basis.  Darned tootin' I will.

Vacayshun

Note:  This post was written July 22nd but not posted until the 29th due to connectivity issues.  So when I say "I'm 30,000 feet in the air right now," I'm not.  I'm sitting in the airport in Newark watching the rain and lightning that are sure to cause our return flight home to be cancelled.  More about THAT later.

July 22, 2009

I'm writing this 30,000 feet above what I think is Minnesota, squished into a seat meant for a size 6 butt (not mine) and finally giving up on getting the rugrats to mind.  Its normally an effort in futility; add a day of airplanes, airports, no regular routine and a 4:45 AM wake-up call, and I'm frankly surprised that haven't torn the wings off the plane.

Three years ago, before we knew we'd be moving back to Washington State permanently, we took a trip with both kids to visit my folks.  Little Man was almost two and Child A was almost five.  The trip to Seattle was like some kind of nightmare concocted from the steamiest recesses of parenting hell.  Both kids screamed the entire flight -- and I don't just mean "cried" or "fussed."  I mean that they threw themselves on the floor and howled PURE BLOODY MURDER for FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT.  The.  Entire.  Flight.  There wasn't a single person on that plane who wasn't wishing the flight crew would open the cabin door and toss us all out somewhere over Nebraska, sans parachute.  One particularly nice flight attendant kept walking by my seat and slipping me little bottles of wine.  To this day, I'm not sure whether she thought I needed them or if she wanted me to give them to my children in hopes of shutting them up somehow.

Experience like that, you'd think I'd never consider flying with them again, and in truth I've long resisted.  But this year it was the only option to ensure we (and most importantly, they) would have a chance to see the NJ grandparents.  My mother in law has had a plethora of health problems this year - they both have, actually - so it seemed more reasonable to face the nightmare of flying with the kids than to go two years between visits.  The kids are too young - lack of exposure often means forgetfulness, and its important that they are able to maintain a loving bond with both sets of grandparents.

Fortunately, though there have been minor episodes of misbehavior and some infrequent squabbling, they have been mostly well-behaved.  At least, well behaved for MY children, which means if they were any other kid their parents would be plotting boarding school for the fall.  Haha, you think I'm joking.

What's really awful about the trip is how freaking EXPENSIVE everything has gotten since the recession.  Just a crappy box of foil-wrapped junk food is SIX FREAKING DOLLARS.  I remember wistfully the days when meals were included in your airfare.  I think Obama should do something about that.  Screw healthcare, fix the airlines!

Rescuer

<<Sigh>>

Upcoming financial changes on the horizon force me to investigate the sale of at least one of the horses.  I hate, hate HATE to do it but I don't see any other way of putting enough hay in the barn this winter, much less keeping up on the feet and vet bills.  So Miss B hits the auction block as of...yesterday.  My hope is to find an intermediate- or advanced-level 4-H kid who is interested in a project horse. 

Forced practicality is anathema to me, especially when it comes to animals.  I'm the person who brings home strays.  Period.   Always have been, and I thought that I always would be.  With fewer resources and smack in the middle of a recession, I wonder if its not time to change my hippie commune mindset.  Back in May I brought home three kittens from my horse trainer's barn, with good intentions up the wazoo to re home them, or at least two of them.  But the right homes didn't present themselves, or maybe, to be honest, I didn't try that hard.  And now I'm attached and the kids are attached and they are staying.  So five cats means cleaning the litter box a minimum of twice a day and I hate doing it, but I did this to myself so no point in grumbling about it.  This is the same way I ended up with the third dog, and the pony, and the third horse...just because I felt like they somehow needed me.

If we're going to be really honest, I think this is also how I've ended up with certain men throughout my dating & relationship career.    Its definitely time to start mending my ways.

Anyone wanna buy a horse?