There are two catches:

1) Only for my mom

2) I suck

The upside is my mom and I have a LOT of fun.

When I was growing up, my dad mowed the lawn every Saturday morning. He had a hideous lawn mowing uniform of tall socks and a threadbare, flesh colored,  stripe-y shirt. When my parents divorced I was in the 6th grade and my mom mowed our yard for a few years until we moved. I was probably too little to help much, and my mom was at the height of her Jane Fonda phase and could push that mower quite well without any help from me anyway.

My history here, riveting as it is, is to point out that I’ve never mowed a lawn. In my 20s I went from apartment living to married life and Mike mowed until he ‘outsourced’ the task a few years back. (He went through a big ‘outsourcing’ phase. Told me with great conviction I should not do things that are not within my ‘core genius’ and all those things should be done by others. Perhaps that’s all well and good if you have a large core of genius from which to draw, as he does. Anyway.)

But now my mom lives in her own place and her grass needs mowing and she didn’t like the people she hired for the job and she fired them right away and borrowed our old but pristine mower. Mike called it a ‘walk behind mower’ because it is self propelled – no strength required.

He gave my mom a lesson on how to use it and they mowed the yard together. A couple weeks later (grass grew slowly, ‘kay?) I went over and she and I were going to try.

And it was AWFUL. There was a HUGE amount of strength required that I just didn’t have. We sweated. We took turns every other row or so because it was THAT hard. We shoved and pushed and pulled and worked together and about killed ourselves getting that small yard mowed. My mom worried about my knee. I worried about her everything. She has famously weak wrists. Then we collapsed in chairs in her backyard, drank ice water, and debriefed.

I told her that the people Mike was paying to mow our (way bigger) lawn were not getting paid NEARLY enough and I needed to go throw handfuls of money at them any time I saw them. I had no idea it was that hard. We recalled that Mike had said, “self propelled, walk BEHIND, no strength required.”

We pondered aloud what the hell he was talking about when he’d come up with those phrases.

So later, I asked him. And he mentioned this special button that I never saw and that my mother had totally forgotten about that ENABLES all that free wheeling easy lawn mowing ability he’d mentioned. And he said that the way we did it was like ‘pushing a car as opposed to driving one.’

Um? Yeah. It did feel pretty much exactly like that.

So after the grass grew, we tried again. And I take issue with the phrase “walk behind lawnmower.” When I pushed that magic button, the lawnmower TOOK OFF, jet-style, and I was hanging on by the handles and my body, legs, and feet flying behind me like a something out of a cartoon. It is more aptly called a “sprint behind or be flung into the next county lawnmower.”  Scary. But much, much easier.

We collapsed into chairs in her backyard, sipped ice water, and debriefed. What we learned: do not leave grass clippings in bag from last mowing session two weeks prior. gross. And also, spiders live in grass and will run about really quickly and scare you to pieces and make you question your footwear choices. gross.

Mom said that in Australia they call it ‘whippersnippering’ and she wasn’t sure the word for it here, but that we might need to think about adding that into our routine, since the edges looked scruffy. I laughed at her, told her that word sounded positively obscene and she shouldn’t ever use it again. She asked the American word. “Weedeating,” I said.  And then it was her turn to  laugh at me. “Oh right, well THAT doesn’t sound obscene.”  (It never HAD until she said it like that. Geez.)

So she researched and bought a whippersnipper/weedeater.  Before I arrived for our first attempt, she called and suggested closed toe shoes. I thought of the spiders. And I knew she was right, but I did feel overly ‘mothered’ and hesitated before saying, “yes. wise. good note.” And it was wise and a good note and later I was glad I listened.

‘Later’ being when I repeatedly put the little white cord-y thing in wrong and turned it on and chunks of seriously painful stuff flew into my legs and lodged themselves right there in my skin. The kids tried not to look like they were enjoying my hopping and screaming in pain every time this happened, but I know better.

But first, I turned it on and immediately gouged a horizontal line into the bottom of her brand new fence. The fence carving was a bright grassy green colored wavy stripe. Oops.  Around this time, Mom and I were frustrated and I said that I didn’t have the correct chromosome for this particular task. Caden-6yr said, “Dad does,” and then laughed at me.

The weedeater stopped working a thousand times and had to be re-wound or put back together or fussed over in some way. I wondered if I turned it at an angle if it would cut the grass growing over the edge of the driveway. So I tried it and cut a deep, hideous four foot long  gash into my mother’s lawn that ran parallel to the driveway, but was not effective in cutting the grass ON the driveway since it was a good four inches into the lawn. Mom sweetly called this my ‘crop circle experiment.’  Ethan-10yr helpfully asked why I was trying to use it as an edger when the instruction manual specifically said not to do that.

We collapsed into chairs with ice water and debriefed. It was determined that a large amount of replacement white cord-y stuff was needed immediately since our efforts had eaten up more than half of it.  We wondered aloud what the difference was between a weedeater and an edger, and if we had the wrong equipment or just a serious lack of skill. It was silently, but unanimously, concluded that it was a lack of skill.  What we learned: wear jeans. And there should be MORE there under the What We Learned section, since we did so very many things wrong, but I don’t know how to fix any of them so I can’t say I learned anything more than that. Wear jeans, not flip flops, and do not gouge lines into fences and lawns if possible.

Then we bought an overpriced household cleaner from a charismatic door to door salesman from Cleveland.  He seemed surprised at our landscaping attempts, and did not even try to appear impressed with our results. Smart.

I’m thinking this is not within my ‘core genius’ and it’s entirely possible I do not even have one of those in the first place. But it’s fun. And unintentionally a bit destructive, but I’m in it until the petite little boss lady with famously weak wrists fires me.

Or until the spiders scare me off.