Yard Work

I accomplished a major feat yesterday.  I mowed the grass for the first time in my life.  What can I say?  I grew up with two strapping brothers who were happy to be outside, and my duties/chores around the house were confined indoors (hence my black thumb and disdain for sweating). 

When we bought our home, Todd agreed to take care of the outside if I took care of the inside.  Not a bad deal considering the size of our backyard.  But he’s been really busy lately and I was starting to dread receiving “the letter” from our homeowners association asking us to trim our lawn.  (I speak from experience, people.)

Anyway, after wrestling with the lawnmower for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get it started (how was I supposed to know there was a little red button?), I began on the front yard.  Since there were a ton of clippings, I had to stop several times to empty the grass bag.  I really wanted to do that cool design on our grass where there are diagonal patterns (how do people DO that?), but I shortly gave up and decided to just do my “square spiral” method where you can just keep moving around the perimeter until you reach the center.

Then I started on the backyard.  Oh. my. goodness.  My original plan of quickly cutting the grass before dinner turned into hubby coming home from work and helping me finish with the weed eater, realizing there would be no supper, then going out to get a Little Caesar’s pizza.  Thankfully, we were done by 7:00 because neither one of us wanted to miss Adam singing on American Idol! 

So, this is what I learned yesterday:

1. I should wear gloves when working the lawnmower for such an extended period of time or I will wake up the next morning with painful blisters on my palms.
2. I must avoid wearing shorts and sandals to mow the lawn.  Getting a tan is not worth the ant bites and flying debris stings.
3. Mowing the grass is an upper body workout.  There are muscles in my arms that I didn’t know existed.
4. Apparently I’m allergic to cut grass because I had to stop and take Benedryl after hives came up on my hands and arms.
5. I do not begrudge the lawn moving company that we used to employ the $40 they charged to cut and edge our grass.