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My Profile
She blinded him with whiteness - 2008-07-25
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10:10 a.m. - 2008-04-22
I'd like to claim we are just that together and hip, but our purchase of a reel lawn mower yesterday had nothing to do with today being Earth Day. At least not directly, though environmental and budgetary concerns certainly factored into our thinking. The lawn tractor just can't do everything here in my alpine steep thickly treed yard. A push mower of some sort is necessary. Provided, of course, you believe lawn mowing is something one has to in the first place. Lawn mowing is something I could easily do without altogether, but tidy Mick would die if I suggested such a radical thing. Mick can deal with his Nature Girl's unshorn legs and pits, but an unshorn lawn? Never. So. A push mower. A new one, or at least one that works, was on the docket (see previous entries from 2001-2007 about the ex's shoddy care of lawn equipment and constant death of mowers by neglect). A recent trip to Home Despot twigged us to the availability of some spiffy reel mowers. What's old is new again and instead of reel mowers being regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned and un-American (my God, no cup holders!) these lovely human powered lawn mowers are all the rage. As 'green' a solution to lawn maintenance as one could get without resorting to sheep. No need for gas, oil, filters, spark plugs, or a battery. No polluting exhaust. No noise either. If lawn mowers wore shoes a reel mower would definitely wear Birks. Okay, I exaggerate a bit, reel mowers aren't exactly all the rage, but they were easily spotted in the mower department this year. A change from four years ago when I wanted to get one and got smirked at when I asked about them. I stood there (with my fuzzy shins) amongst the thyroidal V-12 turbo charged lawn tractors listening to my fellow suburbanites enthuse about how this one had an iPod dock with Dolby surround sound and that one had a built-in beer cooler and a small rotisserie for roasting a snack while one mowed and felt myself a stranger in a strange, strange land. I was never part of the consumerist gluttonous bacchanalia, though I often felt the need for a vomitorium as I watched others buy and buy and buy. As their SUVs and their houses got bigger and bigger and bigger still. As their teenagers were supplied with a seemingly endless number of brand new $40,000 cars to wreck, I wrestled with my gorge and wondered when the traditional American values of thrift, hard work and building toward a better future had become a joke. A lone Charlie Bucket in a land of Veruca Salts I sadly left the store without my reel mower. I have one now though. Mick was as tickled as I was about its purchase and we happily wrangled over who got to do the first mow. A bit premature as 'some assembly is required' and we've yet to settle into being a good working team when it comes to jobs of this sort. He makes me nervous he's so uptight and I make him cranky because I am far too casual-sounding about Getting Everything Exactly Right The First Time Lest We Be Booed By The Life Judges. I lost my claque of invisible critics some time ago, but my poor darling man still has so many they have their own set of bleachers. All the better to settle in with an unobstructed view of everything he does.
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