Tales from the Mower

One of my little joys in life is mowing the lawn.

I realize this is weird and many view this as a chore, but I find it rather relaxing and enjoyable mostly. (Unless it's been raining for weeks on end and it's more knocking down a jungle than mowing. Or when it's ninety billion degrees and so humid it ought to be raining.)

Here in the demesne, most of what we have is forest (for which I am grateful. I don't think there's a person alive who would enjoy mowing 10 acres.) But we have a reasonably sized front and back yard, plus septic field that needs regular mowing. (And by regular, I mean every few weeks, not the regimented weekly demanded by an HOA. Because we have no HOA, and for that I am also grateful.)

Sometimes, I use our electric walk-behind mower. Sometimes I use the riding mower. It just depends on what I'm in the mood for. (And all the time, hubby says to me, "Why are you mowing? We have teenagers!" and I have to remind him that I enjoy it and I certainly would rather do it myself than try to coerce either of them to do it because they both hate it and it's an exercise in hard core parenting to make it happen. Just not worth it when I'm happy to do it myself.)

T'other day, after Noah finally launched his ark and the rains stopped, I decided it was beyond past time to do a run over the yard and, seeing how high it had gotten, opted for the rider. I was happily driving away, reveling in the sights and smells of fresh-cut grass and letting my mind be soothed by the steady back and forth, back and forth, when I heard a noise that seemed a little off. I stopped the mower and got off to look and...I had cut the Internet cable.

Because of course I did.

Since we moved here, it's always been an exercise in making sure we didn't cut it, because for whatever reason, it was only partially buried (or so I thought) - and it always popped up above ground near a front yard tree. I have deep thoughts about the choices made in running the cable, but we've lived her four years and never had an issue. So I thought I knew what I was about.

Turns out, all the rain and the scrabbling dogs and Murphy, I guess, all conspired to have the cable pop up a little more than usual in a different spot (or the new belt on the riding mower made better suction for the blades than I was used to) and *boom* cut cord.

Fan. Tastic.

It took very little time for the men of the house to boil out of the doors like angry ants to see what happened because they'd lost the Internet - life blood of the technology slaves.

I finished up what I was mowing and came in to call Verizon.

That went about as well as you'd imagine - calling an ISP is always such a joy - and they'd have someone right out...in two days. 

You would have thought I told the boys that we were moving to Walden Pond for the summer.

Still. We survived. And the Verizon guy came out and, looking at the cut wire, muttered "What the f* did they do." Then he turned scarlet and apologized profusely. But I was cool with it, because we've had similar thoughts about the partially buried cable.

Except it turns out it's not partially buried at all. It's completely un-buried. Just strung across the yard begging to be cut. We were all immediately amazed that we'd managed not to cut the thing in the four years we've lived here because it isn't just the tree area where it could have been accomplished. Regardless, he pulled it up, strung a new, temporary line, and we were back in business.

Cut to two weeks later, and on Saturday, they showed up to bury us a new line. This time, whoever they sent actually had a brain and, on consultation, went wide of the tree and its root system so it could be buried the whole way from street-side box to house connection. Imagine that! 

I believe, at this point, it's not actually connected as the temporary cable continues to live atop the lawn - hubby says there's a whole testing process that they'll do at some point this week to ensure that the switch over is seamless.

Since it resulted in a properly buried cable, I'm seeing it as a win. But my men folk are all still a little salty about the whole debacle anyway. Maybe I'll make them mow once or twice just to remind them that it could have been them wreaking havoc instead of me.

But probably not. Because I really do like to mow.