There is a line in the movie My Blue Heaven, starring Steve Martin and Rick Moranis, where Martin is mowing his lawn in a shiny suit, not exactly fitting into the suburban culture he was placed in by the Witness Protection Program. He turns to the person watching him (looking into the camera), and says, "Nice day for a mow, huh."
Well, yesterday was just such a day. The sun was shining, a cool breeze was blowing, and I spent 2 1/2 hours pushing my mower around the ground, walking over 1 1/2 miles to get this yard done. I had already spent at least an hour and a half the previous day on the front yard. Today, I am very sore, and have some fresh tan lines, but my yard is done!
Jeff Foxworthy says, "If you mow your weeds...You might be a Redneck." If that's true, my existence has been nullified. I definitely do NOT consider myself to be anything even remotely CLOSE to a redneck, but I definitely mow my weeds. In fact, thanks to the previous owners, for putting in the cheapest PVC available when they installed the irrigation system, all I have is weeds. If there were no weeds, my yard would not be green at all. And before I mowed it, it was mostly PURPLE!
Once I had mowed all I could, I still had one more issue: All the brown, dead tumbleweeds against the back fence. My oldest son, Skitl helped me pull a ton of these over to the fire pit and we started a bonfire. I invited any students that wanted to come over to help us celebrate the Open-Burn season, and we threw almost all the weeds, along with several old pieces of wood and one old cedar post onto the blaze. We started the fire around 6:30 pm and put it out around 10:30 pm. My yard hasn't looked this good in ages.
It was also nice to get LadyBug out of the house for a bit. There was cloud cover, so she didn't have to worry about exposure to too much sunlight, and the breeze combined with the heat from the fire to make it a very nice evening. We roasted hotdogs, and had some S'mores. Skitl and I ate 98% fat-free Turkey Dogs on whole-wheat buns, and avoided the S'mores. All in all, we had about a dozen or so kids, age 14-43, and enjoyed each others' company for several hours. The last kids left around 11:35 pm, so it was what referred to in the season 3, episode 12 episode of M*A*S*H as, "a full, rich day." Okay...so I threw in one more quote!
And the best thing? With all that fun and satisfaction, I also am down another five lbs! I know, I know...you don't lose five lbs. just mowing the lawn for two days. But two days ago, I was 5 lbs. heavier than I was this morning. I'm not going to try to figure it out! I just know that I am now only15 lbs. away from my ORIGINAL target weight. I think I am going to shoot for another 15 below that. At the rate I'm going, I should be there by the time school starts up again this fall. Or at least very close. Maybe I'll finish reaching my target weight around the same time LadyBug finishes all her surgeries. I figure I will have to mow my lawn at least 8 or 9 times before fall, so if I can lose 5 lbs. every time.....
2 comments:
Mowing is great exercise!
Embrace yer redneckedness! :0P
I raked up 5 bags of bark today until the winds got up to agazillion mph. Gotta rake up all the bark so we can xeroscape. So if you need any more exercise, come rake bark!
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