Adventures in Lawncare

The Brother has one regular chore in this house, and he gets paid for it and he works at it and doesn't do much else because he's scheduled down to the last second between the school band, the school jazz band, the drum corps he does after school and his girlfriend. But now he can't even do his ONE CHORE, he's so busy, so guess who agreed to take it over?

Problem: It's mowing the lawn.

First there was the safety lesson from my dad, with such gems as "Wear your heavy hiking boots or you'll hit a rock and break your ankle" and "Don't spill the oil on the ground or you'll rot in federal prison." And little chemistry lessons thrown in like "gasoline evaporates quickly." Because there's no way that someone who took a college chem class with a focus on organic chemistry would know that, I mean, really.

Then came the actual mowing, in the hot sun for hours, followed by going over the edges with a weedwhacker, hauling sticks in a wheelbarrow, carefully leaving the wildflowers on the lawn without leaving the grass around them, then going over the thing with pruning shears just to make sure I got all the obvious missed spots, and all the while I'm thinking Shit, between the gas exhaust spewing out of the mower and the fact that I'm contributing to the negative impact lawns have on natural ecosystems I'm basically raping Mother Nature's corpse right now.

This means that while I will probably do well in Ecology because I think things like that, I basically have proven that I will sell out for $32 (all that work and he said "Oh, you missed some spots" and took off $3 for it) and a lawn that doesn't make the neighbors want to evict us.

So I feel sweaty and gross, STILL, and my ankles are beat up and sore not from rocks, but from the fact that it was too hot to wear wool socks and my ankles were banging around in those stupid boots. I took them off as soon as I stopped using things with spinning sharpnesses.

I bet I have to do this the week after next, too.