A new found love…

Since it’s been monsooning here for like 2 weeks and because of our schedules and such, our backyard has not been cut since the first weekend in April. So, over a month. And since our humongous backyard (which seems even bigger now that I’ve cut the whole thing) is nothing but weeds, the “grass” was up to my hips in some areas. Pretty bad. Poor Sanibel got lost everytime she went outside. Well, she didn’t get lost, but I lost sight of her when she was outside. She definitely didn’t like it. Tail down, she would bark at every weed that moved. Brent realized that because of our Mother’s Day plans, he wouldn’t be able to cut the grass until next week unless he did it tonight. But, tonight we had trash pick up with the youth (no mom, I don’t mean the 2 days out of the week that the garbage man comes through the neighborhood to collect trash). There was no time for him to do it between work and trash pick up and I knew it would be getting dark when we got home…so I had the grand idea to cut the backyard myself and surprise him. I’ve done it all of zero times in my life…except for a few rows one morning. All I know is to pull the chain and start walking in a straight line. And I do actually know to pull up the motor when it sounds like grass is clogging the blades, but I did not apply that knowledge tonight. So, off I go cutting down the forest of weeds with a push mower that is NOT self propelled in a yard that is much too big for push mower and still has standing water and mud through the middle. About 1/4 of the way through, after it had already choked twice, it ran out of gas. Well, there are 3 red gas cans in the garage and as far as I’m concerned, they all hold gas and gas is gas. I didn’t want to blow up the engine and I also didn’t want to call Brent because the surprise would be ruined. I thought about calling my dad and then realized how dumb that was…how would he know which of the 3 gas cans has lawn mower gas in it? Then, I think about guessing and just hope that I’m a good guesser. But I decided that’s not such a good idea either. So, I finally just call Brent, out of breath, and ask him a very random question, “What gas can is the one for the lawn mower?” And of course he asked me why and figured it out. After 90 minutes of mowing, choking the motor about 15 times and having to take a break, not from mowing, but from pulling the chain, my goal was finally accomplished. There was no surprise, but the yard was cut and he didn’t have to do it after trash pick up…that’s what matters, right? I now have a new found love for Brent. That is a tough job. My hubby needs a riding lawn mower.