This new kitchen appliance also cuts the grass
- col-teri-stein
- November 11, 2020
- 920
Guess what is in my kitchen this week? It’s a new, big, beautiful, blue, bouncing… battery powered mower. That’s what happens when you don’t like to shop. Your husband, who is nice enough to run errands for you, sees a good deal and you aren’t there to talk him down.
I probably wouldn’t have talked him out of this deal though. We already have an older battery powered mower that we love. They are light weight and you don’t smell like exhaust when you are done mowing. Another plus is you don’t have to worry about checking the oil and blowing the motor like I might have done this past summer.
The mower had been left outside at the store (not a good thing for a battery powered mower) and it needed to dry out. The best place for that, of course, is in the house because it’s warmer and the garage is already stuffed with essential items (in Joe’s mind) that we couldn’t possibly do without.
The mower was only supposed to be in the kitchen overnight or two nights at the most, but guess what? The mower is still there and it’s closing in on a week.
Joe politely asks if I can fix him a sandwich. Sure, I say. I go out to the kitchen. The mower is sitting in between the refrigerator and the cupboard with the plates. I roll the mower back and move it out of the way, but this blocks the access to the basement stairway and the back door.
One day was particularly full. We spent the morning watching a wonderful crew of tree service people take down a huge tree in our neighborhood. They did it in the matter of a couple hours with some high-tech equipment that reduced what is usually back-breaking labor to the ability to run a machine.
During this time, I was getting some photos and Joe is talking to our neighbor and his father. We’re all outside because as everyone knows, it’s always fun to watch other people work. Joe is telling them about the lawn mower in the kitchen, “Teri’s mad – well, I won’t say mad exactly – that the lawn mower is still in the kitchen.”
I broke into the conversation. “No, mad is a good word. You can use mad.”
Later, we did some volunteer clean-up at a historical site where we cut up a fallen tree using old-fashioned back-breaking tree removal methods and fished a bowling ball out of the swamp there.
I would love to know the story behind how the bowling ball got in the swamp. How long had it been there? Did someone have a bad night bowling? Did they just roll it down the road to the bottom of the hill where it hung a right and landed in the swamp? Did they pull up beside the swamp and chuck it in there? That would have made a satisfying splash. I’m sure we will never know, but writing groups – here’s a good story starter.
Anyway, it had been a busy day, so on the menu for supper was frozen pizza. Only one small problem, the mower is parked in front of the oven. It required planning ahead. I had to get the pizza from the freezer in the basement first, before I could move the mower and block basement stairway so I could use the oven.
In the summer, I started exercising on the porch. This didn’t always work out so I moved to the kitchen some days. Now, the kitchen is out. One day this week, I was trying to decide if I should do some extra exercise for the day or skip it. I walked to the kitchen and there’s no way to exercise with the mower in there. I can’t even move it to another spot and have room.
You never think about how easy your life is when you don’t have a mower in your kitchen. Of course, Joe wants me to be happy with the situation. “If you didn’t have me, you wouldn’t have anything to write about,” he said. This is true but then I wouldn’t have a mower in my kitchen either.
It’s the small things in life we have to be thankful for and I’m thankful for the wheels on the mower that make it easy to move. But I’m sure going to be more thankful when this mower is out of my kitchen.