Sunday, April 06, 2008

In Which I Buy Myself a New Chore

I bought a lawnmower online today. In spite of the fact that my new mower will be quiet, eco-friendly, better for the lawn (it snips instead of whacks), and a constructive way to get exercise and fresh (cleaner) air, forces from all sides were conspiring to keep me from purchasing a manual reel mower.

Spoiler alert: through the grass-roots (hah) resistance help of People Powered Machines, I totally won.

Drew thought it was stupid to do something manually that you could do faster and louder with a gas-powered machine. He was all firm in that Captain America way that if I bought a manual mower, I was the only one who would be using it. I felt as if I was asking Dad for a new puppy. "I swear I will feed it and walk it and clean up after it. I promise. Can I? Can I? Can I?"

Once I promised to never ask him to mow the lawn with the quiet, eco-friendly mower, I had, well, not necessarily his blessing, but his non-forbiddingness.

Today I went shopping. It turns out that the gas-powered devices have won the battle for shelf space in all the major (and local) home and garden stores. Yes, they sell a manual reel mower, but it is the old-school type that they only use in period-piece movies. The modern, silent, non-contact, welded steel jobs that need sharpening like once every 8 years and are engineered like Japanese cars are not offered. It's a good thing I did my research first and knew what to look for, or I would have bought one of the prison models and would have been disappointed and Drew might have seemed to be, you know, right.

So I came home and bought a slick awesome one for about the same price they were selling the old-school one at Home Depot.

Another day. Another world-saving action. And Captain America thinks he's so cool.

Did I mention that I drive a Prius?

2 comments:

Brian and Becca Davis said...

Our landlord left us one of the pioneer versions of the push mower. So if we leave it too long between mowings it can get ugly. But with a smallish yard I enjoy using it.

b

Anonymous said...

Free of lawn mowing at last...and I didn't even have to initiate it. I think I'm gonna like this new eco-friendly way of doing things.