The Swampy O'Neals: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

So, today Donny finally went and bought a new lawn mower. I say "finally" a little unfairly because I have been telling him to just wait until after our vacation but it was really getting out of hand. The grass was almost 2 feet in some places, no lie. The starter cable on our previous mover broke the several weeks ago (and by several I mean a couple of weeks after we moved here) and while we talked about fixing it, that never really seamed to happen. So today we broke down, espcially since the dog went out to have a moment and we lost him in the lush jungle that was our yard (not really but when the dog would go out I would say "Hey, where is Luke?" and Donny would say "Hes right there" and I would say "Where?" He would say" Right there...haha, very funny"). Every time we would go outside together I would start to hum the Tokens. This morning started out the same as usual, with me being pissy as I often am in the morning, and Justin being restless, as usual. I decided to break the pool out early. We set it up and turned on the water, then went inside to change into a swimmy diaper. Well, I put on a swimsuit, Justin put on the swimmy. But not right away. While I was in his room getting his diaper and swimtrunks, he ran out and got in the pool. Naked as a jaybird. Is anyone seeing a pattern here (see Blog "Bad Day")? So Donny came home with our new mower, which had no idea the job that was in store for it. We gassed it up and oiled it and put that baby to work. After a minute Donny had to empty the bag...then he had to empty it again...then again, all in about a 5 minute span. After that he just left it off. Justin splashed around in his pool and I sat in a chair catching some rays and watched the action. Soon Donny got to the long stuff and the mower died. He backed it up and restarted it. Soon it died again. He quickly figured out that he couldnt just push the mower over the grass, he had to go back and forth in short sections, not unlike shaving your legs or face. He would mow a patch, then lift the mower to let all the grass fly out, then mow a patch, ect, ect. At one point he was going along and we heard a "THAWCK!" and a golf ball came flying out of the mower, going nintey to nothing toward the house. I screamed, Justin laughed and Donny got really freaked out because that could have hit one of us and done who knows what kind of damage. He stopped and we walked once again through the tall grasses looking for more golf balls. We didnt find any but he later ran over 3 more (thats how long the grass was), none of which sailed out like the first, thank heavens. He kept the back of the mower pointed toward the fence after that, so if another ball was under there it would not fly at Justin and I. He pushed and pulled and restarted and pulled the thing behind him. Your boy mowed that lawn in every which way possible. After a bit I got up and began to rake up the grass that was already cut. It was at this point, on one of the restarts, that the whole thing started to blow out this thick (thick) white smoke. I started hopping around and hollering "Turn it off! Turn it off!" I was convinced we had burned the motor up, basically lighting about $200 on fire, with a nice, fat patch of 2 foot grass left in the center of the yard. It was just some grass on the muffler though, and after a few minutes it cooled off. The yard was awfully smokey there for a minute, and Justin kept shouting "Fire!" Donny eventually got one half of the yard (the longer half) finished before we ran out of gas. The other half was all wet from the pool anyway. It looks like a real yard now and you can actually walk around (I'm serious, it was that long). Now the yard is clean, the pool is filled, the sprinkler is hooked up...and Justin is asleep on the couch. Thats how it goes, I guess. Oh well, it's almost 5 on a Saturday, time to crack open a cold one and think of some dinner. I'm still in my suit, I may go out and sit in the whale and catch some of those evening rays. I hear they are less harsh than the noon ones. Or is it the other way around?

A restless morning