My schedule is....beyond ridiculous. Every moment of every single day, including - and sometimes in particular - the weekend, is booked. Sometimes, double and triple booked. I've pretty much given up accomplishing anything beyond the obligations and then just the highest priority obligations are what get worked on. I rank priorities based on how much grief I'll get if the obligation isn't actually done. This leaves virtually no time for R & R!
That's why I look forward to Friday night. Every single Friday night, starting sometime between 10:30 and midnight, I have a weekly Mario Kart Wii meetup with some friends. In some cases, the kids of friends. It usually ends between 2:30 AM and 3:00 AM Saturday morning. It seems like about 30 minutes have passed.
The earliest I can get home on Friday, if nothing else is going on, is around 7:30 or so. At this point, I try to get my lawn cut, if it isn't raining. If I miss Friday night mowing for any reason, I'm in a near panic all weekend because I KNOW it won't get done, and my next chance will be a week away, due to that schedule issue from paragraph one.
So, last Friday, I left work a bit earlier than usual on the way to pick up my daughter from a rehearsal so I could get snack supplies for the late night Mario Kart fun! Just as I left work, I got the call that my daughter Rebecca wasn't feeling well and I should pick her up right away from rehearsal. That meant no stopping for snacks. I also knew that BIG storms were working their way across the great state of Missouri, so I needed to be getting that grass cut! Panic was beginning to set in and I wasn't even home, yet! After picking up Rebecca, she asked me to stop at Walgreens and get her some cough drops.
Ah ha! I could pick up Dr. Pepper and munchies there! So, I ran into the Walgreens, grabbed some Dr. Pepper (diet) and some Ruffles with Sour Cream and Onion dip. The proper dip is important! I also managed to remember Rebecca's cough drops and ran out to the car. It was already looking like it was going to just DUMP water on me at any second.
CRISIS!!!!
I hurriedly threw all the important snacking supplies in the kitchen, changed into some mowing clothes and ran outside. If you are keeping track, this has involved a lot of running, so far! I mowed in prioritized sections that I knew gave me the greatest chance at getting the most done, leaving the area under the big trees as my last section. It takes a while for rain to get through those trees, you know.
I mowed like Charlie Daniels battling the devil with his fiddle. (Feel free to let that soundtrack go through your mind at this point in the narrative) First I cut the common ground area that runs behind the first three houses on our street. This used to be an open storm-water drain, but got filled in a few years back when the sewer underneath it was reworked. My neighbors behind me, that have no discernible yard care skills at all and barely cut their grass, will non-the-less scalp the area behind our house just to spite me...knowing (because I told them) that this results in dead grass and proliferating weeds. If I don't do it first, they'll run out their with their mowers to scalp the lawn. This makes me VERY upset.
Sometimes, even cutting the grass doesn't stop them. One week, I mowed the grass on evening and the next morning they were out scalping away! Can you believe that? Some people's kids!
So, that part of the lawn is first. Then I moved to the front yard, because people see that. Part way through, it started to rain. I continued to mow. Despite the steadily increasing volume of rain, I got done with the front yard without getting too wet and prepared to put the mower away, thinking it was too late to get the back yard. However, that panic thing started setting in again and I fired up the mower and started on the back yard. Since this was under the big trees, I really didn't get very wet and didn't notice too much rain. I assumed it had let up a bit. In fact, I didn't really notice how hard it was raining until my wife yelled at me from the back porch that it was probably time to come in. When I turned off the mower to see what she was saying, I noticed it was raining pretty hard. Very hard, actually.
Undeterred, I yelled back to her "two more minutes!" , and fired the mower back up.
I finished that section, leaving only the section that once was a driveway and has since been reclaimed by the lawn and weeds (the reclaiming process took about 2 weeks. Apparently, my lawn is closely related to Kudzu - and the gravel is still under it!) that also now holds my daughter's swing set. Pretty good, overall!
I wasn't even really that wet, despite the thunderstorm raging outside! I even had dry areas on my shirt to wipe my glasses on! I was really looking forward to my later Mario Kart play period, I figured that would be just reward for being such a trooper and mowing the grass in the dark, during the beginning of a thunderstorm.
Life is good!
However, fate had other plans for me, since I walked into the house to find my wife and "sick" daughter, sitting on the living room floor EATING MY MARIO KART MUNCHIES AND DIP!!!!
ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!
Editor's note: This story is just too action packed to fit into just one post. Come back tomorrow for part 2 of the series!
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