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I knew I had to do something about the yard yesterday. Our yard, especially the front yard, could be politely called "spotty." What this means is the yard is a whole lot of dirt, with a couple grass blades here and there, and a few patches of nice, thick grass.

Okay. Step 1. Go out into the garage. Open the garage door. This is very loud, and I always feel like everyone on the cul de sac peeks out their window to see what the racket is when I do this. Get some light in the garage. Aaaaah, better. Time for Step 2!

Step 2 is very important, and is called "Fucking with the mower." There's a whole host of things that I have to do with the mower to make sure it's ready to go before I start it up. The first thing I do is unplug the cord going to the sparkplug, since the manual says to do this before I fuck with the mower. Well, it uses haughty terms like "adjust" and "calibrate", but I know what it really means.

Step 2a is lowering the blade, since we had it set sort of high for the first time. Step 2b is checking the oil level... dipstick has the oil at full. Cool. Step 2c is making sure the mower has enough gas. Unscrew the cap, peer into the tank... looks a little low. Get out the funnel and gas can. Proceed to acquire the motor skills of a four year old and slop gas all over. Wonderful. Okay! Ready to mow!

So I took the mower out, push the primer button 3 times (I think it starts the flow of gas through the lines, but I'm not sure), yank on the cord, and we're off to the races! I start relentlessly marching up and down the yard. I've never mowed a mostly-not there yard, so my rows are really erratic, since it's sort of hard to tell where I've been before, so after a while I'm sort of zigging and zagging back and forth trying to run over the taller blades of grass.

I've got the front yard done, so I head along the side of the house. Very spotty grass. Many erosion run-off ditches. A lot of dust spits out the mower's little side chute. Okay, back yard! The back yard must not get enough sun, since the ground is still really soggy right up against the house. Techinically, this is a powered mower. However, it's little motor is about as big as the cat, and does about as much pulling as the cat could do if it was hyped up on some really good drugs. That is to say, okay on flat ground, not so good up hills, and pretty crappy in mud. Watch Matthew yank the mower all over, trying to run over the blades of grass. Run run run.

Okay... on to the otherside of the house. The grass is really thick and lush between the AC unit and the side of the house. Naturally, this area is too narrow for the mower to fit into. I may have to come out with scissors or something in a day or so. This side of the house also must not get enough sun, since there are some pretty long goopy muddy patches I have to wrangle the mower through.

I'm almost done mowing when the mower suddenly dies. Completely. Shuts itself off. I look down to make sure I've still got the liddle handle held down that is supposed to keep things running. Yup. I yank on the starter cord. Zippo. Could it be out of gas? No, I just filled it. Besides, it didn't sputter or anything! It turned off!

I look at the mower from the side, and suddenly this "Holy shit" feeling washes over me. I never reattached the sparkplug cord. At all. It's still dangling happily off the front of the motor. The motor is on top of the mower, so it wasn't in any danger of being run over or anything, but still... this is supposed to be my grand safety precaution! The thing that keeps it from starting while I'm fucking with it! Tentatively, I reattached the cord. I brushed up against the sparkplug, and it was quite hot. I got back hehind the motor, held down the handles, and yanked the cord.

It started up like a charm. I mowed the rest of the lawn, and then released the handles. The mower shut off, like it was supposed to. This is good. For a minute there, I was worried I had the Christine of lawnmowers.

Go back onto the porch and look at the lawn. The lawn looks pathetic. You know how bald men grow their remaining hair longer and sort of swirl it around so it looks like they've got more hair? This sort of works if the guy only has a little bald spot or if his hair is just "thinning". Well, our grass had been doing comb-over, and things just looked even patchier now than they had before. Crap. And, the grass that was left looked ultra short. I'll have to remember to raise the blade back up to the notch it was at before.

Standing on the porch, I heard another small engine running down the street. I leaned out and looked, and some guy was mowing his lawn... on a riding mower. If you've ever seen our house, you know the yard isn't exactly what you could call expansive. Certainly not enough to justify however much a riding mower costs compared to a push mower. But there he was, riding and mowing away...

Hell of a way to spend a Wednesday evening...