A Lovely Little Rant

Irony is a delicious thing…I think. You see, I have been having another one of my recurring episodes with my Least Favorite Appliance/Machinery Thing, and I was thinking about finally taking out my frustration on my blog. BUT I simply had to click over to Lizzie and Sarah’s blog (where Sarah finally posted but you can’t tell because Lizzie immediately posted two posts on top of Sarah’s. Yes…ho-hum, we can tell who’s the oldest child now, can’t we? Nothing against eldest children. I happen to be one), where I just read of Lizzie’s frustrations with her vacuum cleaner. Thank goodness Enil happened to post a bit of a tribute about how hard women work in the house, including vacuuming, but I believe that was merely a coincidence as well.

Anyways, now I feel as if relaying the long, terrible tale of my godforsaken weed eater is unintentional copy-cat-ing, but I will try to complain as ingeniously as possible, all the while making Lizzie feel better about her own predicament. And yes, Sarah, I did read your lazy blogging. Very non-boredom provoking.

Okay, so as long as I can remember, I’ve had this weed eater problem. I’m really not sure why I have the job in the first place. “It’s not very lady-like” doesn’t seem like a reason that would get me out of doing it. Now, we had this one weed eater before. It was a very nice weed eater. It gave me a little trouble at first, but that was back when I was a young laddie…um…lassie, and I had just started doing the weed eating. The problem is, everything I name George ends up dying. Our sweet little duck named George, the literal “black sheep”, was *gulp* “gotten” by our dog, Nancy. That was very sad. But this weed eater, whose name was George, had a very absentminded caretaker (me, fyi), who had absolutely no clue that putting normal gasoline in a weed eater instead of the gasoline/oil premix stuff, was VERY BAD. So…*cough* *sputter* *screech* and that was the end of poor George, along with the beginning of a long bit of lectures from the rest of my family, who OF COURSE knew that you can’t put gasoline in a weed eater without killing it!!! So I forked over what cash I could and my dad went and bought a new one. This one was NOT NICE and VERY IGNORANT. I named him Abner, but as much as I hated that name, that was Lewis C.’s name in Th’ Un’spected Gift, and Cute little blonde boys are quite far from stupid weed eaters, so I settled on Seth. There are good Seths in this world, but I don’t like the name.

From the moment I first saw Seth I knew he was trouble, and I was right. We’ve hated each other ever since he came to live with us. I didn’t really like weed eating that much before, considering being out in the hot weather, holding heavy equipment that vibrates your hands so much that you get calluses, but this was worse. An excerpt from a book I’ve been writing for about two years…

I looked at it. I thought ogling at it might make it decide to work.
The weed eater sat there insolently.
“Come ON!!” I pleaded.
If it could huff, it would have.
I pushed the clear gas-pumper-bubble-thingy ten more times, mumbling, “‘Easy Start’ indeed.” Then I got up and pulled the crank.
I pulled it exactly fifteen times.
This number would have been satisfactory, aside from the part where it’s supposed to start within one to three yanks of the pully-thingy. I had been doing the same thing for the past half-hour without even the least grunt from the motor, and it was driving me up the wall.
Incensed, I sat down. Mom had said that if I didn’t finish trimming the yard, I couldn’t go to the beach. So I was frenziedly trying to finish, in hopes that I wouldn’t be stuck here at home. But I always had problems when I did the weed eating. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
So, I decided to ask my dad for help.
He yanked the cursed thing about ten times, and it started.
Either the dang weed eater only responds to the “dad” authority position (similar to my dog) or I’ve got a weak arm. Or maybe I just needed to give it a few more yanks. I could have just as easily started the weed eater, I resolved. It just needed ten more extra yanks.
I tried to thank my dad over the roaring of the engine, and then I went on my way. I was making good progress until I noticed I wasn’t able to get much grass cut down as I made my sweeps. So I hit the string release thing against the ground several times. But nothing string-related was dispensed.
With this lovely new development, I impatiently slammed my hand against the switched that stopped the weed eater, unscrewed the knob, pulled out the string, put everything back together, and then went back to my weed eating.
After about ten minutes, I had the same problem. Only this time, it was a bigger dilemma. Not only would the string not come out, but the screw wouldn’t come un-screwed either.
I was also screwed.
I tried numerous different strategies but all of them made quite a conscious verdict to FAIL.
So I walked inside to take a break, act pitiful and eat cereal.
We were out of milk. Foiled again.
My mom walked in and I explained my current predicament to her. “You’re always coming up with excuses not to do that job.” She smarted.
“But something is always keeping me from not doing ‘that’ job!” I protested. “It’s the weed eater. It sucks. Something is always wrong…”
“Well, we couldn’t afford a nicer one, I’m sorry.” Then she added, “If you hadn’t broken our LAST one…”
“I didn’t mean to!” I objected. “I told you I didn’t know that the gas was supposed to be mixed with oil.”
“I know, dear but still, it’s broken and this is the only one we have and you’re going to have to learn how to use it.”
I have been developing a hypothesis. The whole world is against me.
“Get out there right now. I don’t care what you do, just weed eat.” She looked like she was going to pull her hair out.

Yeah…the sad thing is that some form of the same thing happens every single time I weed eat. Today, guess what? The string wouldn’t come out, so I spent about seven minutes with the monkey wrench trying to take the string out to loosen it, only to not be able to put the thing you wrap the string on back into the bottom of the weed eater, and not be able to screw the screw-thing into place because it’s like the top of a jar that gets crooked, and then I realized it wasn’t going to bounce right, so I had to take the turning-wire-track-thing out, but it was stuck. I spent another ten minutes or so trying to un-stuck the stuck, abusing the machine a couple times with my little friend the monkey wrench (I’ve come terribly close to naming it Sunshine Bob). Finally I decided that I would try to think rationally. I was going to tap the track-turning-wire-thing to perhaps loosen it up, but instead the tapping pushed it in right, I was able to get on the screwy-thingy, and I poured in gas/oil without spilling it all over the place (which I’ve done the past two times…yuck). By this time, it was nearly dark, so I only did a quick sweep of the front yard, around the air conditioner big-loud-doohickey, and the outside of our fence before I couldn’t really see if I was getting much or not. And I think that by then the wire was getting stuck again. You know, you’d think I’d have this all figured out after some two and a half years. No. I can’t wait till Robert can do it, and then I’ll also be very over-thankful to my husband whenever he weed eats. I’ll cook a great big standing rib roast with garlic mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus, honey wheat rolls, and a great big salad. Then I’ll give him a nice massage and we’ll go watch a shoot ‘em up movie or whatever HE wants to watch. However, if we only have four square feet of yard to our name, there will be only ham sandwiches and chick flicks, because I would really like a little more land than that…..of course, whatever we can afford……and that’s far in the future. But aren’t you hungry now?

I never want to be a…

-Weed eater technology assistance person
-Weed eater repair woman
-Lawn maintenance worker
-Manufacturer of weed eaters

However, if I had the brains for it, I would love to invent a more efficient weed eater, that does what it really says it’s supposed to on the box. Or maybe I’ll invent the hover-weed-eater that just senses where things need to be edged and does it by itself while you go do fun things.

Anyways, enough ranting. I’m sleepy…and I have to get up and do the back yard…*seriously considers converting to pessimism*

WAIT!!! Very good news. Some of our new, and very good, friends joined Candler for the rest of the summer…we’re so excited!!! They came today and we jumped around a lot in the diving pool. It‘s just his first day, and one of the guys already went off the top platform (10 meters)! Then we just treaded water in the diving pool, passing around our volley ball/pretend water polo ball, trying to throw well, giving up, and then trying to hit each other in the face with it.

ANYHOO, like I said, I’ve got to go to bed now. Ta-ta!

--Jessica