April 29, 2010

What do a broken washing machine and a weed wacker have in common? Nothing at all...


So you know when you get to that point in the week where you must, MUST do laundry because if you don't, no one will have anything clean to wear? Well we were there on Monday night.

And then the washing machine broke.

And the repair guy can't come till next week.

Fun times.

On the plus side, I've gotten pretty good at hand washing clothes. Thank goodness the dryer still works or I would have been writing this from the loony bin right now.

And in totally unrelated news, I learned how to use a weed whacker the other night. I know, I know, who doesn't know how to use a weed whacker? Ok, so I knew how to use one, I just never had used one.

Despite the fact that, since we switched over to an electric lawnmower eleven years ago, I have been the primary lawn mower person in the house (it's not even that I love to mow, it's that I can mow without running over the cord. And after your husband destroys, say, the seventh extension cord, you just give up and do it yourself) but I've never done the weed wacking. In fact, I've always had a overblown, illogical fear of the weed wacker. It probably stems from the same paranoia that keeps me away from power tools. Or maybe it's a vague childhood memory of being nipped in the ankle with the flying string of my dad's edger. Actually, I'm not sure that ever really happened, but I was told it would happen enough that I grew to adulthood thinking that it had happened. I wonder if there's a name for that - the fear of weed wackers, not the being told something so many times that you are convinced it happened, that's just called childhood.

Anyhoo, while Will and his fair assistant were putting together my pergola (which was lovely, by the way, for our bookclub soiree. And Bre, I did the blue table runner of the white cloth and it was very pretty indeed, but I forgot to take a photo of it!) I decided that the grass was in desperate need of a trim around the edges, so away I went with the neighbors cool cordless weed wacker.

And I totally love that thing.

I'm not sure what that says about me. It seems like any gardener worth his or her salt shouldn't be quite so delighted to see the downfall of anything green and growing, but I did. It made me want to laugh maniacally, except when I try that it just sounds like I'm choking. I'm evil laugh deficient. I can't burp either. But you didn't need to know that.

So now I can't decide if I want a weed wacker or a fig tree for Mother's Day. On the one hand, one of the dogwoods is on it's way to the firewood pile and needs a replacement and, well, you can never have too many fig trees. But on the other, well, there's the destruction of invasive grass at the touch of a button. Decisions, decisions....