Lawn Mower Tales

No pictures on this post. I wasn't thinking fast enough.

You might recall that I am a delicate being and do not put fuel in my car. Yes, I know how and I did do it while on my trip. Two times, in fact, once on the way and once again on the way home. Necessity. While I was there, my grandson took care of it. With this in mind, read on.

I mow. I mow a lot. I do all the prep mowing with the push mower. I mow a wide swath around my gardens and under the trees. I mow my back yard, my side yard and the other side yard area between the main building and the pool. I keep my blade low, liking a clean shaven look. I mow about every third day. I do gas up the mower out of necessity, but will happily take advantage of having someone else fill the tank. I don't like to fill tanks. I know how, I just don't particularly want to.

I mowed my back yard. I do a thorough policing of my yard before mowing and pick up all the poop. After mowing that I took the mower through the shed to continue my self prescribed assignment for the day. I start the mower and discover that self propel function is not working. I was not happy about it. As I said, I mow a lot.

Next day, when HeWho fills my car with gas and is in charge of mechanical things around here informs me that I have killed another mower. He says I ran it out of oil. Me. I am not in charge of maintenance! I haven't a clue about where to put oil in a mower, how much or what kind.

He bought me a new mower. I was happily mowing my back yard Thursday morning, knowing I would not have a chance until Monday to get it mowed again. Early start to my day, I was patting myself on the back about how much I was accomplishing. I mowed close to the fence and felt a rock come out and hit my leg. It stung, but it wasn't going to stop my progress. I mowed on, until I happened to look down at my leg to see if the rock left a mark …...

Not a rock. A screw, philips head to be exact, was embedded in my leg. Just sticking out, so I reached down and grabbed it, intending to yank it out. I was annoyed at the interruption. It was stuck in that soft tissue. Wouldn't budge. The attempted removal hurt worse that the initial injury. Made me feel a tad queasy. I had heard the dogs bark earlier and thought maybe HeWho was out to get his daily dose of cholesterol laden food was back. They bark because he usually gives them a treat.

No, he was not in the house. It was too early to go banging on a kamper door and demand a screw removal, so I grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers and clamped down on the screw and gave it another yank. That really hurt. I sat down and gave careful consideration to my current dilemma. Should I try unscrewing it? Just the thought of that gave me pause. I called HeWho and told him to come home, that I had shot a screw into my leg.

I was awaiting his arrival on the front porch in the rocker, with my injury propped on the other rocker. I had the good sense to grab a couple of ice cubes and hold them on either side of the screw. Xylocaine would have been better, but I had nothing with xylocaine in it. As he approached me, asking what kind of gun shoots screws, I held out the pliers and turned my head and told him to just get it out of my leg. 

I must say he did a fine job. It was fast and didn't hurt nearly as bad as the anticipation did. I even finished mowing after dousing the wound with peroxide and applying Neosporin and a band aid.

I realized later that I had failed to get a picture of the screw in my leg. The peroxide caused it to bleed and there was a considerable blood stain on the concrete. I wanted to chalk a body around the blood and put up crime scene tape, but HeWho has no sense of humor washed it away.