It's 82, humid and sunny. I don't like heat and I HATE, HATE, HATE yardwork! I was raised in apartments and find yardwork to be a huge waste of time, petroleum and the whole concept of a "lawn" to be a vulgar display of environmental conquest. My ideal "lawn"? indigenous prairie plants on a gravel bed. Kids wanna play on grass? Fine. I'll box them off 30' x 30' lawn under the tree-house. I HATE yardwork.
Effin' lawnmower won't stay running. Throttle linkage? fixed it. Fresh gas? Got it. Correct 4-cycle oil? Filled. Spark plug? Pulled out, gapped & scrubbed shiney clean. Air-filter...clean and dry. Oh yeah...tools. I had to search my toolshed by flashlight-in-teeth because Father-In-Law did some magical electrical wizardry in the main house and now there's no power to my shed.
I'm hot. I'm sweaty. I hate yardwork and I hate the smell of petroleum products. I'm hanging on by a thread going into this bull$**t afternoon.
Starts first pull. Hurray! Mow a row...dies. Starts...dies. Starts...dies. Repeat over, and over, and over again until I am ready to hurl mower through the air and hope that it detroysn something when it lands. Now I am a human being encased in sweat and filled with rage. The blood is pounding in my ears. My hands are shaking. Serenity? HA HAH HA!!!!! I'll be lucky if I don't cut the dog's head off with a machete just because I can smell dog$**t in the yard!
What happened? Why am I so enraged? I know this is a dangerous place for me.
Grasping..."Our Father who art..." nope. "God grant me the serenity"...nope. Call someone? Good idea...but WHO? Most men find my problem with yardwork a bit bitchy. The same guys can't stomach eating the meat from off the skull of a catfish. Sooooo...take a deep breath and walk into the Temple in my head. I recite the situation to the statue of my HP.
This was an event. An event which I entered into with an expected/required outcome. First Mistake: Making my expectation a requirement. Then I clearly allowed my expectations to exceed my acceptance. "This mower has to get fixed and it has to get fixed by me! Right Now" When in truth...the mower's malfunctions exceeding my ability to comprehend is something I must simply accept. My front yard looks like a corn-maze with a hohawk. I can accept that.
My expectations exceeded my acceptance and THAT is what shattered my serenity, raised my hostility to dangerous levels and threatened my sobriety.
Sun Tzu - In serenity and firmness One will not be detroyed by events.
Mower? I have one more plan. I may have used the wrong oil. I'll figure out a way to drain it and try out-board oil. If that doesn't work...off to the shop.
Electrical to my shop? That is for another day.
Me? I'm gonna make a burrito and look for funny stuff on the internet.
Seems like I'm not the only one having problems today. Nice save Rob...way to use the tools of the program. Wish I was closer, I love working on electrical and the challenges it can create. As far as lawn mowing goes, I hate it too and don't do it. I pay a guy who is admittedly a crack user to do it for me. Is that a form of enabling? LOL I've been working a temp job with a former business partner building a loft in a log cabin in the Smokies. I spent the first 2 days in a 120 degree attic full of fiberglass insulation tearing out walls and ceilings. I'll take a hot house over that experience ANY DAY.
Wow..... let me just say I am soooo glad you came here and ranted that off, because I can remember my own dad taking it out on other people at home... so kudos to you for that. And I don't like yard work either, and used to complain about it... and now, I have no yard to call my own.
What I wouldn't give to HAVE TO be out there trying for the 1,000th time and for the 6th YEAR to clear away a humongous patch of running bamboo that some fool planted the year before we moved in.... but those days are gone now.
But that is life on life's terms.
I did not stop and appreciate fully what I had in that enormous, tangled-up aggravating mass of flora. I hated the work. And the heat. And some days I am grateful to no longer have that responsibility. Some days I am saddened by it.
I hope your lawn mower starts working again and soon. I hope the heat lets up there, as it finally has here. And I hope your day finds more serenity, with or without a working lawn mower, because I know what it is like to have a lack of it. I know how dangerous and even life-threatening the lack of serenity can be. It plain old sucks.
(((hugs)))
Joni
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~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
Peace Rob...It's okay for now to let it go and walk away with a smile. Course it didn't sound like the smile was there in the first place so how would you know what to keep? Problem did sound like gas so maybe an extra roll of rolaids handy might have helped. A bit of gas stabilizer for the mower might have helped also if the mower had been sitting around for a while with old unleaded fuel in it but what do I know other than my experience. I've learned that my hands are not physically attached to stuff I cannot change so I can open them at any honest time and let go.
Good "other" prayer for me is the St. Francis of Assisi Prayer..."Lord make me an instrument of THY peace..."
I know for a fact already that you are very creative, that is what you do for a living.....
Find a way out of this chore, it comes up, well like the grass, right.....so trade some kid fishing lessons, or someother thing that you are good at, where you can help him with something he does not know, and teenage boys really dont mind the sweat, most think it adds to their awesome tans....for the girls.
Or maybe take up a little collection at work, for the work to be done by someone that does not HATE it.....you can fill in the blanks on what the collection would be for, you could offer a service of some kind, an honest one, haha.
$20. would thrill the average teenage boy, well maybe 30, so all you have to do is figure out how to help someone else out for a trade of 30 bucks.
Feel for you dear, this is not the first time we have seen you so upset with your Yardwork, I will be saying a Prayer that you can get yourself off of this obligation......Let Peace that surpasses understanding with your HP be there, whenever you seek it.
hi Rob, I do feel for you. so glad you came up with an alternative to any bad stuff you could have chosen. I get to water our garden, the mr mows the lawn, it is kinda small so he invents all kinds of dirt moving activities that he has to "level to a gnats ass" to be just right because he is a perfectionist. just listening to him makes me want to go on vacation without him. Anyway thanks for the topic
I agree that the lawn is an out-dated environmental waste of time and energy. I got rocks. All sizes. I want a river of rocks to take up the flat places that grass and weeds grow. I haven't put them out pretty and neat yet, so the weeds and all the untrimmed trees, bushes, plants have an un-loved look, rather than the wild and natural thing I'm trying to move on toward. I've decided to live with it. I choose not to fight the lawnmower; it always beats me, like it knows I have no respect for it. I don't like to lose serenity over yardwork, especially as I'm still learning to do the inside job as if I am treating myself to a luxury bubble bath and preparing for a fun night, you know, get into it budistically. Nice to hear from you, Angel
Rob. Its the ethanol in the gas. It is killing power tools and boats nationwide. It does two things. It dissolves plastic and rubber fuel lines and carries this mixture through the carb leaving residue behind which clogs your carb. It actually sounds like your float is sticking in your carb. The second thing it does is it evaporates very quickly leaving behind lots of condensation which, of course, is water, and water in your carb does not burn. It sounds like you need your carb cleaned out and then try to find a gas station that sells "no ethanol" gas. Also you should buy "Stabil" which is a gas additive. What it does is form an "oil slick" on top of your gas in the tank preventing evaporation and protecting your plastic and rubber parts. Give that a try before you shoot your lawn mower with a rocket propelled grenade. Tom
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"You're in the right place. That's the door right there. Turn around."
Interesting. I was raised in a modest house with a modest yard. It didn't require a lot of care, but it was nice to have. After that I lived in apartments or condos for quite a few years, and hated it. When I got my first "real" house - which, not too surprisingly - occurred after I got sober, having a lawn again, much larger than the one I grew up with (and not flat!) was both a new experience as well as sort of coming back home. I can't say I "enjoy" yard work, but I find a certain pleasure in doing it, and having it to do. Of course it does help if the mower works. I sit at a desk all day, and mowing the yard is one of my rare physical chores and it puts me into a meditative state (again, it does help if the mower starts!!).
Now that I'm married, my wife has gotten into some gardening and landscaping. Which I dabbled with, but nowhere near what she has done. She's finding out how much work it is too now! A couple years ago I had to have some major work done that dug up the yard (twice) and so we got to start from scratch on landscaping.
The thing is, the yard is simply too steep for us to mow it. Too steep, and too large. We did it ourselves for one year, and it was just too much. Nice to know we could handle it. We bought a commercial mower and it still tipped over on the hills, except now you're wrestling a 300-lb bear when it tips, instead of a 50-60 lb bear. Last year, we found someone local to do it and it's worth the $$ just to not worry about it. We still cut the back ourselves (dog run) and have the garden and landscaping and all that, which is plenty. At least for now, I can afford to pay for the cutting service.
If I lived out west in the desert climate, I'd have a rock and cactus lawn like my aunt and uncle in Tucson used to have. But try that around here in the midwest, and you'll end up with either a mudslide or a ragweed and dandelion patch that will sneeze half your town off the map. We water the garden plants, but the lawn doesn't need it - we get plenty of rain.
Rob, do not use outboard oil in your mower. Just drop it at a lawn mower repar shop and tell them what its doing and tell them you think the carb needs cleaning. Then just keep a little can of gas and put an ounce of stabil (or whatever the label says)
__________________
"You're in the right place. That's the door right there. Turn around."
Rob. Its the ethanol in the gas. It is killing power tools and boats nationwide. It does two things. It dissolves plastic and rubber fuel lines and carries this mixture through the carb leaving residue behind which clogs your carb. It actually sounds like your float is sticking in your carb. The second thing it does is it evaporates very quickly leaving behind lots of condensation which, of course, is water, and water in your carb does not burn. It sounds like you need your carb cleaned out and then try to find a gas station that sells "no ethanol" gas. Also you should buy "Stabil" which is a gas additive. What it does is form an "oil slick" on top of your gas in the tank preventing evaporation and protecting your plastic and rubber parts. Give that a try before you shoot your lawn mower with a rocket propelled grenade. Tom
Ding! ethanol is likely the culprit. Carburators don't process ethanol very well. Very few gas stations sell ethanol free gas but there are some out there. There are some better products than stabill now for ethanol. "Ethanol RX" is designed to reverse the damage that ethanol causes. I've used it and it works well.
