Second Negative

Mow, sputter, die…

Out in the suburbs, the neighbors are watching you. Probably not on a Desperate Housewives kind of level, but they’re watching. And passing judgment.

When I was living the apartment life, I couldn’t have picked my neighbors out of a lineup. I didn’t say anything to anybody unless they said something to me. I’m only mostly anti-social.

So, fast forward, and here I am living in the valley of the damned, and now I’m supposed to wave at everybody that walks by, drives by, speed walks by, etc. And I’m also supposed to say hi to their kids. These are the rules as Nicole has explained them to me. My grandma says “BE NICE”, but I didn’t know it would involve waving. Talk about your cruel and unusual punishment.

I came home last Thursday and decided to mow the grass. It seemed like a good idea since I hadn’t done it in two weeks. Hey, I’ve been busy not writing posts for this site. Luckily, two guys a couple of houses down were already outside mowing, so that added to the guilt. And guilt gets things done.

The problem is, the grass had grown so thick in patches that the mower couldn’t mulch fast enough, and the engine sputtered and died. Twice. Okay, three times. But since I went to the Midvale School for the Gifted, I was able to determine that the best course of action would be to raise the cutting height. And that probably should have worked, but it didn’t.

So I had to go digging around in the garage for the bag, which I filled up and emptied into our huge plastic garbage can with a mighty THUMP. Unfortunately, since it’s been 115 degrees here, a gigantic grass cloud surrounded me like an angry swarm of killer bees and stuck to every sweaty skin surface on my body. I considered killing something, but went back to mowing the grass instead.

Every once in a while I’d steal a glance down the street, where the more experienced mowers were standing together, engaged in a little idle chit-chat. About what? Well, either the weather or the jackass two houses down who had killed his mower three times, and was now cleverly disguised as Swamp Thing. But that’s just speculation.