I'm the Man

This summer I became a man. 

That’s right, I mowed 3 acres of 2 ft high grass on a riding mower, twice. And I’ll do it again.

But let me back up, or put it in reverse.

The grass in question is in upstate NY in the Catskills. You know, log home, great for tubing, skiing, summer campfires with raunchy lyrics made up to the tune of Kumbaya, bears, deer, rampant lyme disease, mosquitos the size of Rhode Island, that kind of thing. The kind of place that just makes you want to drink non-lite beer and see who can burp the loudest.

There is no cell service up there, because the residents are stupid, I mean stubborn enough to want to keep it that way, I guess, so once my right hand stops twitching toward my iphone and  twitterfon button, I kick back, start relaxing, stop wearing makeup, crank up the Carrie Underwear CD, and make a lot of jewelry. 

And it’s quiet. So quiet. Not only can your hear yourself think, you can hear everybody on the entire street think. They aren’t too bright, so once I stop listening to them think after 10 minutes or so, I notice how the stars are huge at night and the air is perfect.

The kids even get along better as they have nothing to do but watch TV, play outside, and bust my chops. We do have cable internet access, but In a brilliant move I decided to go for the slowest kind of service available. Did I mention there is no cell service? There is no cell service. That means no iphone. No cell service. There is no cell service.  

We’ve had this place for about 4 years and were usually able to find somebody reliable to mow the grass and plow the snow. That ended with this guy Brendan or Brenden, never quite did get his name, who bailed on us so many times we finally bought a riding mower last summer.

Back to the Lawn. Mowing the lawn has always been my son’s job, But, because we decided at age 15, it was time for him to learn the value of a dollar, My Dear Boy just got a job at a swanky beach club locally as a cabana boy. This is a very difficult job requiring heavy lifting (moving beach chairs) customer service (learning how not to gape at everybody’s daughters) and food management (delivering fries and burgers to the members without eating any). So he’s out of the picture as far as the lawn goes.

Just one problem with his fabulous new job. We forgot about the grass. And it rained alot.

As I pulled into the long driveway the horror awaited me. 2-3 ft tall weeds and grass. 3 acres of it. For sake of argument, I guess you could call it a lawn, but really, the place looked like redneck hell. All that was missing was an abandoned rusted out pick up truck on the front lawn and shotgun shells near an old wooden post.

After I stopped swearing in front of my young impressionable daughters, I unpacked the car and went out to the shed to get the mower and get down to business. And then I started eating grass. I mean mowing the lawn. 

To my credit, I did not utter more than a dozen curse words as the wind blew everything in my face and contact lenses, or gag as something that was still moving flew up my nose. I did instead choose to retaliate by  singing every song I know as loudly as possible and changing the words to curse my husband, who was “working” that weekend.  

 Three hours later, I did not even cry when the mower got stuck in a little ditch and it took me half hour to throw my entire body against it to inch it out because there was nobody to help me. Did you know  AAA doesn’t cover riding lawnmower towing service? They don’t. No, I remained a good role model for my daughters and sucked it up. 

After all, my middle daughter will be old enough to mow the lawn in 2 years. Mama didn’t raise no fool, honey.