Lawn Tiller Induced Coma--Part Deaux

I'm Officially A Yard Whimp?


There was a time about a hundred years ago about 20 years ago when I did 99% of my own yard work and generally had one of the best looking yards in our little neighborhood of new houses.

I had a Snapper "high vac" riding lawnmower and a Snapper self propelled walk behind, and a weed eater and a leaf blower and a de-thatcher and a drum aeriator and a gas powered chain saw and just about every hand yard tool known to man.

If something needed cut or chopped or trimmed or killed or planted or otherwise maintained, I was your man and had the knowledge and tools to do it.

Fast forward to the year 2011, and I'm not quite sure what happened (except the ex wife took everything but the little Snapper and the weed eater and the leaf blower in the divorce,) but somehow I've turned into the biggest Lawn Whimp in the annals of recorded history I think.

Today all I have in the way of lawn tools at my disposal is a crappy push mower I resurrected from a neighbor's curb side junk pile (I did rebuild the motor however), a couple of garage sale weed eaters, and a (gasp) ELECTRIC chain saw.

Where I come from no self respecting country Redneck would ever be caught DEAD using an ELECTRIC chainsaw. But I'm a City Redneck now so I can balm my conscience a little...that, and I keep it (the electric chainsaw) hidden in the basement most of the time so family and visitors won't see it and only bring it out to use in emergencies. (Things like a tree or tree branch sticking out of my own forehead and such...)

I was thinking of starting a support group for guys that were raised using a real manly GASOLINE powered chain saw and are forced through age and/or circumstance to use the electric powered toy models like I'm forced to operate these days.

So any wayyyy....as I reported on Saturday, being lacking in the home lawn tool department these days, I ran out and rented a Lawn Tiller from Home Depot for a 24 hour period to use getting my garden plots into order.

Twenty four hours would seem like plenty of time to most people, but for me it's in effect a bit of a rip off considering I can only manage to hang on to the thing for about 15 minutes of each hour.

Then if you deduct the time while I'm hanging onto the handles and the engine is actually running (I'm hanging on the rest of the time to keep from falling down), and you'll find that on average I managed to operate my rented lawn tiller for about 5 minutes each hour.

Doing the math, 5 minutes per hour x 24 hours yeilds a grand total of operating time equal to 120 minutes.

In other words...

TWO HOURS.

Of course I didn't actually come outside after dark and run my rented lawn tiller for five minutes each hour...I was real brave and stacked those minutes up for efficiency sake.

Then I started the motor and plowed around in the dirt until one of two things happened.

A. The tiller ran out of gas...only managed to live that long once.

B. Something broke. Since the tiller was a pretty new Honda model, generally whatever broke was inside of or attached to ME.

Going down the list of aches and pains this morning, besides feeling like my brain has sloshed around inside my cranium like I was a Rodeo Rider on a Bull named "Tornado," I guess that the number two area of damage would be my shoulders around my neck, followed in a close third place with my hands...my callous-less hands which are puffy and don't hurt but actually have no feeling in them right now as I try to type--presumably from the nerve damage.

So after going back to WalMart to buy a quarter ton of "Manure" in neat little 40 pound bags, and some more $1 sale tomato plants (I have a dozen now), I grabbed the tiller motor starter rope and got started about noon yesterday and by about 3:30 PM I was ready to surrender the infernal machine back to it's owners in the Rental Tool Department at Home Depot.

Then we stopped by the local hole in the wall Mexican Restaurant and after consuming an order of Pollo and Carne Fajitas and a couple of Jumbo Gold Margaritas on the Rocks with Salt, I came straight home and landed in my bed.

I woke up about Midnight in a stupor, and I swear I could feel EVERY SINGLE MUSCLE IN MY BACK, LEGS, AND ARMS. 

That is, if you can call what I have in my body these days Muscles. 

The way my body is declining I think that even the word "Flab" would be an overstatement. 

If I used the words "my flab is hurting" I think that I'd risk insulting  Richard Simmons and his swarm of "Sweating to the Oldies" followers.

Hold on...wait...oh no...I think that the top of my head even hurts right now, but I can't feel it because my hands are numb.

OK, I have to go now and see if I can find a position in bed which doesn't make me want to call 911...

Pray for my recovery...and regards Y'all...