I planned a productive day!  Just because I don’t know how to do something doesn’t mean I can’t do it! After surviving an hour with a devil trainer at the gym, I’ve got the confidence of a tiger. I head straight to Sears to get a spark plug and filter to fix my lemon lawnmower.  I feel lucky! I get home; get settled with tools, supplies and the mower. I can’t get the old spark plug off. My 78-yr-old neighbor sees me in the garage. She comes over to coach me. She has her dachshund, which looks just like her, on a leash. She quickly ties him to a chair, bends over to pull the plug off, and then tells me it’s stuck.

Forget the Mower!

I go to Lowes to buy a seal for the rocking toilet in the master bath. I’ve bartered with my son-in-law, Chris. I’ll watch his pugs; he’ll change the seal. The Lowes guy doesn’t know which seal I need so I buy two. I also buy a big manual hedge trimmer because my electric hedge trimmer almost electrocuted me last year when I got the cord caught in the blade. New plan: Trim bushes; tiger confidence intact.

Driving home from Lowes I get a text from a co-worker.  There’s a problem at work, which delays me 60 minutes.  It’s nearly 3:00 and nothing is fixed. All I’ve done is spend money and get caught by a co-worker.

Jan calls. “What are you doing?”

I tell her and she tells me I should throw the lawnmower into the pond.

My tiger confidence is gone.  I decide I’ll go out on the patio eat lunch, read, and relax. The sun is shining. I strip out of my “public clothes” and put on my “private clothes”, which include shorts that are too short and a tube top so I can get a tan. Things are looking up.

I settle down with my lunch and book. I look out toward the pond and see a tree split in two lying all over the ground and on my fence.

Within minutes two big mountain men pop up from behind the foliage.

Want us to take care of that there for ya?

“I just noticed this tree 10 minutes ago,” I tell them. “I don’t know when it happened.”

Happened last night. My old lady woke me up this mornin’ and told me to go look for tree work. There was a power outage and big winds. I can get this all hauled outta here for …uh…. $300.

“I don’t have $300 right now. Give me your card and I’ll call you.”

What I don’t add is, Get out of here. I’m wearing a tube top.  I want to eat my lunch and I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about this toppled tree right now.

Instead I say, “Hey, can you fix a lawnmower?”

No Ma’am, I’m not a lawn service.

“Okay, well my daughter told me to run it into the pond.”

Oh…you can’t do that or they’ll sue you for spillin’ oil in the pond.

It’s getting cloudy. I leave the mountain men,  go inside, dump my lunch and look at the clock. Is it too late to go to work?