Guess who waited six weeks…

By now most of you know the plight of my new lawn. It is huge. It requires mowing. Hubster is not here so apparently that mowing falls onto me. And it rains, a lot, so the grass is growing freakishly fast.

Did I mention that my current lawnmower is a battery-powered toy we used in our previous townhouses?!

After weeks of tracking down landscaping bids and then having heart attacks over the cost of mowing, I found an unsuspecting teenager who likes money. Sadly, this isn’t a random teen. This teenager belongs to a great friend of mine and I worried incessantly over losing that friendship due to the jungle warfare I was throwing her kid into.

Apparently she’s okay with losing a kid.

So the JungleTamer (JT) shows up and looks in disbelief at the lawnmower I present him with. It is tiny. It is plastic. It is battery-powered. I have to give that kid credit, as a teen I’m pretty sure I would have run off the moment I saw that thing. Luckily for me, JT is made of much sterner stuff. He loaded the battery into the machine and starts off on the mowing. I watched the first two passes in shock… while laughing where JT couldn’t see me. The mower would barely move and he had to keep lifting it to get it to actually cut.

I knew it. The grass was too long, the mower too underpowered. But JT was committed and he takes that commitment seriously. That or he had a hot date and needed the cash I was giving him.

Either way, I was winning.

Then the battery died. The battery that should last 4 hours. It died in under 15 minutes. Okay, nobody panic!!! We have a second battery. Maybe that old one was worn out. JungleTamer replaces the battery and with a smile on his face, he starts up the mowing again. It’s at this point that I start texting JT’s mom, hoping she’ll forgive me if her kid gets lost in the yard.

Then the unthinkable happens.

Battery number two dies. What the hell are we supposed to do now?! That’s it, the front yard is the tiny yard and we used up two batteries to do half of it – I’m doomed. I’m already planning on how to burn the grass with a propane torch when JT steps in as the voice of reason. He’s going to return to his house and bring back a bigger, gas-powered mower. Gasoline. Good idea.

If that mower doesn’t work out, we can pour the gas on the ground and light a match.

Yard – taken care of.

JT arrives back to the lawn from hell and he starts the mower up. One pass in, the mower stops. Once again, nobody panic! (At this point I just sat down on the porch and decided I was useless for the rest of the day.) JungleTamer puts gas in the mower. Mower won’t start. JT starts playing with things on the side of the mower. Mower won’t start. It’s official, I’m burning down the house and starting over somewhere new. JT asks for a screwdriver. I consider giving him a lighter, then hand him the screwdriver thinking he can stab the engine with it if needed. JungleTamer jams that screwdriver into something and then leaves it there while he mows.

After paying JT extra money for all the trouble (and hours) that kid put in, we agreed to not wait so long in between mowing so it would be easier next time.

If you didn’t note the title of this post, go look at it now… JungleTamer may not come back.

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