Breaking Up Is Hard To Do...

Do you have the song stuck in your head? In case you didn't...

Ahhh the classics.

Anyway, on to my story... Today I broke up with Verizon - the call effectively ended with a:

Customer service rep: "I think you're going to come crawling back to us."
Me: "Yeah we're done here."
Customer service rep: "Well let me tell you what we can do for you."
Me: "Apparently I need to practice crawling now... just cancel the -sorry mom, grandmother, & Debbie...  insert an explicative here- service."

Dad - I figure you'd either be 1. proud or 2. tell me I didn't use enough profanity...

I was going to Quentin Tarantino this for you to see how we got to the unpleasantries above but decided my continued vent wasn't a good read so here's the cliff's notes version:

1. I canceled because they increased my bill by $35/mo - this being the 4th increase in a year -  $60/mo more than what I paid last July...
2. I gave them a fair shot at being competitive... they failed.
3. Customer service rep is an asshole. (sorry mom)

My first and LAST time mowing a yard

This week I decided to surprise my husband, Justin, by mowing the yard. After all, I was on vacation taking naps during the afternoon, indulging in trashy TV and day-drinking while doing so and he was hard at work. He didn't even get the fourth off.

What I learned was that I need to learn other ways to surprise my husband.

The challenge:
I've never mowed a yard before. Ever. I'm pretty sure my dad was certain I'd lose a finger or something so he never taught me this. Plus by the time I was old enough to learn we lived on such a big lot that he even said was painful to tackle so my yard skills are fairly limited to maintaining flowerbeds (a skill I didn't learn so well judging by my own flowerbeds).

But... this seems easy enough right?? I mean you just start it and push it... done and done.

My equipment:

The beginning:
So I wheel that sucker out of the garage and into the backyard. I figure I'll start there so my neighbors don't have to experience my amateur status right out of the gate. This proves to be a good decision in a few minutes.

I'm in the backyard trying to start this bad boy. I pull on the cord - I knew that part at least - and it's not really going anywhere. At this point my dogs are looking at me like I've lost my mind. That's when I figure out...

That bar right there... yeah you're supposed to hold that down. Hmmm....

Ok - minor glitch but finally I get the thing started (*cough* after 10 pulls) and I've got to say, I'm feeling pretty empowered at this point.


The rest and the end:
I was so in-over-my-head with this thing that I didn't really take mental notes for good blogging but here are the main takeaways I gathered:

1. Mowing sucks. The end.
2. There really is such a thing as "man's work". (I fully intend to tell Justin this when he dare suggest something as horrendous me mowing the lawn.... or whenever it's something I don't want to do :) )
3. The bottom lever is for auto roll or something like that. Basically there so you don't have to manually push this heavy*** thing all over the yard in nearly 100 degree weather. Yeah... I learned about this magical lever AFTER I was done.
4. If you let go of the top lever your mower dies and you have to do the painful process of start-up again... I really learned this point after the third time it died on me and the dogs gave me a "you're dumb" look.
5. If you push a mower around like a vacuum you get an interesting (er unattractive) pattern in the grass.
6. If you own dogs, you have two real choices - pick up the yard grenades pre-mow (else you'll be like me and dodging flying grenades) or invest in a goat...

I've already named our goat "Henry"...

I've also informed Justin that I expect him to postpone his knee surgery until the winter when the grass is dead.

Happy Fourth of July all!