When the sun finally came out Saturday I knew there would be no more excuses; I had to lift my ample posterior up off the couch and out in the garage to fire up the lawn mower. The grass had gotten so high I wasn’t sure the old machine had enough power to wack through it.
But I needn’t have worried. My grass is as thin as Steve Hemmingsen’s hair. (When was the last time anyone used the words Hemmingsen and thin in the same sentence?)
Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars with every lawn service in town and invested in an underground sprinkler system all in hopes of achieving the lushness and thickness of yards we see while driving around other neighborhoods.
I even had an SDSU horticulture specialist stop over to run some tests on my soil. I believe the recommendation was “move someplace else.”
Perhaps the reason my ground is so sour is because it was once a favorite spot for roving herds of buffalo to stop and take a leak. Whatever the reason, the grass has a hard time growing in the dirt. On the other hand, dandelions, clover and lots of other noxious weeds find my soil full of everything they need to flourish.(Ancient ammonia?)
I gave them all a good dose of weed killer on Saturday and I see they’ve sort of coiled over as if to give the impression they’re goners but I’ve seen that before only to have them stick their yellow and white heads out of the grave when you’re not looking.
We came close to buying another car over the weekend. It’s a 2006 Chevy Equinox all wheel drive SUV. It looks and runs great and the price was only 8 thousand dollars. The trouble is, it has more miles on it than the ten year old car it was to replace.
I shot them an offer at closing time and the guy said he’d check with his boss and let me know. My phone never rang and I’m kind of relieved.
Sunday was one of those days I imagine all should be like during the month of May. Too bad I wound up spending a couple hours of it on the phone with our son, James in Oakland. He and daughter, Christy went together and bought Linda a “Nook” for Mother’s Day.
Up until a few weeks ago I would have defined “nook” as a secluded and obscure corner usually located right next to the “cranny.”
But in this age of gadgets, designed to overwhelm anyone on the plus side of fifty, I have discovered a nook to be an electronic device that looks something like an etch-a-sketch that lets you download an entire library’s worth of books and magazines from Barnes and Noble to be read on the screen anywhere anytime as long as the battery’s charged up.
Well, nobody enjoys reading more than Linda so it IS a great gift..except that the Nook needs to be set up to do all those magical things and since I’m only slightly less electronically challenged than my dear wife, the job of registering the Nook fell to me and an extremely patient James on the other end of the line two thousand miles away to guide me.
I’m not sure which is more frustrating; the complicated process of interpreting the“techno-speak” language of the instructions or the realization that I’m just too dumb to figure it out.
Anyway, after a long, long time and a couple very close calls where I nearly flung the new Nook through the window, we got the thing set up.
I think the first couple of books Linda plans to download are entitled “Living with a mad man” and “Firearms for Dummies.”
