Monday, March 14, 2005

Making rent

Lawn care is silly. Seriously. It just grows back or gets messy again. I come from a family that grinds up the leaves in the fall with the riding lawn mower and considers it OK when we miss a patch one week or even two. It has happened that when people visit that sometimes a foot square patch will be 6 or 7 inches taller than its friends. No big deal. Nature that is not being cultivated for food should be left alone. That’s what I know.

So, I spent 5 hours today raking a giant affluent lawn. I was given some story about reducing the acidity of the lawn to kill something that looked like a pretty underlayer of green moss. I did not finish, nor was I expected to. But I was all by myself and it pretty much sucked. I did, however, get to ride the riding lawnmower, which is an actually skill that already possess from my childhood. We put a 17 cubic foot trailer on the back (isn’t 17 a prime number?) and I got to learn just how difficult it is to back up a trailer and put it in the place that you want it to go. At the end of the day, I just sat on the mower for a few minutes and let it shake my spine straight so now my hips don’t hurt. It’s the only good part of my day aside from earning $100 and getting to be outside in the beautiful weather.

I wish that I had done some complicated reading in the morning before I went so that I could have thought about it all day. Instead, I was bored and singing classic rock songs from the radio. “Dear Mr. Fantasy, sing us a tune, something that will make us all happy.” I believe that the next line involves the word, “snappy.” That was my day today. Making rent. However, I am reading a book that pretty much encapsulates the suburban life that I left behind and I’d much rather be living this life raking lawns than that life, where much of my happiness came from buying the right things.

I have a little sunburn on my face in the middle of March. Ha ha.

I’m going to attempt to make meatloaf tonight. The recipe in my cookbook calls for four different pounds of meat AND 12 strips of bacon. I think a pound of just plain old ground beef will have to do just fine. Wish me luck.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Princess. Fun to read and think about you on the rider mower. Love, dad

PrincessMax said...

I think the funnier thing to think about is Daniel on the riding mower with the metal Red Flyer wagon chained to the back with Jeremy Hlinak in it clinging for his life while Daniel drove in small circles and big fast curves to try to buck him out.

That being said, I also want to add two details to my post. One is that the day didn't really suck; it was just boring and my muscles don't like that kind of work. Two is that I have no choice about the classic rock. My radio seems to be broken and can only pick up two stations. However, both are classic rock and each is only available on opposite sides of the island.