Mower woes

Wow, here I go again falling out of blog land. Days just go by so fast, then weeks. This past weekend was the annual MS Walk that several of us walk in in honor of my mom. It was a good walk- 4 miles, and a nice sunny day. Then on Sunday Joe and I work outside all day. We had quite the adventure with our riding mower. I was trying to help him by mowing while he painted some trim and fixed some boards in preparation for putting on a new roof. But our mower is SO old that it just doesn't stay running. We didn't even buy this mower. It was left as "junk" from the previous owners. But Joe being Joe, he knew he could fix it, even though the former owners said that even someone who specializes in mowers said it was toast. But alas, Joe worked and worked on it and eventually got it running. And we've been using it for the last 3 years to mow. So yes, it "works" but it is to the point where there are so many little jerry-rigged tricks to do that have to be done just so, well, it just doesn't like me. Every few minutes it would die, we'd have to push it back over to the car and jump-start it off the car. It was rather frustrating and time consuming. And stupid me ran over some strapping and it got all caught up in the blade. Joe had to take the whole belly of the mower off, take the blade off, and pull the strapping (that was now totally shredded) thread by thread out with pliers. Ugh! I felt so bad. Maybe I should just NOT help next time. lol Oh, and did I mention the "key" to start the mower? There isn't one. Well, there is, but it is useless. Instead, to start it you have to use a piece of copper wire and touch it to 2 little black things on the mower at the same time. After that day I told Joe to just buy a new one. It's ridiculous to spend that much time and such every time he needs to mow. We are both already short on time all the time, and mowing takes long enough as it is. We got 3 years use of free riding mower, and that's great, but I think it's time to get a new one! That thing is at least 30 years old, if not older. (previous owner is my boss, and she just laughed when she heard we were actually using that thing). I think I've just about got him convinced to buy a new one. We'll see if he can actually bring himself to really do it.

Okay, so this was a terribly boring blog entry, I'm sorry! Pretty sad that I disappear for a few weeks and come back with nothing but a lawn mower to talk about! LOL Actually there is more going on, but will have to write about that later.