Getting exercise

I really wanted to go running tonight after work, but you know when you really want to do something.. and then there is the stuff that you should be doing? Well, the ‘should be doing’ stuff overruled, and I ended up mowing lawn tonight. Man was it a dusty night! Since we live so close to the road, and it’s harvest season, there was a lot of traffic going past our place tonight. At first I thought, well it’ll slow down – yea that didn’t happen. Then I thought, well the wind will die down and it won’t be so bad – yea that didn’t happen either. Daryl and I were trying to figure out just how many semi’s and other farm equipment went past our place in the 3 1/2 hours and we both agreed that at least 50 times someone went past our farm. And let me just tell you that this was a lot of road dirt flying at me when I was mowing. OK, so I was going to run and to be honest I was just a little bit worried about someone running me over when they were driving by, so mowing did make the most sense. So I thought, OK I’m only going to mow the ditches and the front lawn. No big deal, and then I can get cleaned up and be done with this. So I used the rider and mowed the one ditch and over by the windmill and the Roadhouse. Things were going good. Then I thought that I’d better start in front of the house. But did you ever have ‘one of those feelings’ ? Well I did. I thought, I wonder just how much gas I have left in the rider? Since we don’t have a gas barrel at the farm, this is an important question. Well, I looked and didn’t like what I saw. It was very much past the E on the gauge. So I drove back to the barn and got out the push mower. Now this is where the exercise comment comes in. The push hasn’t been started for sometime now and if you ever tried to start a push lawnmower that has sat outside in the last couple of rains and hasn’t been used for awhile, you’ll know what I”m talking about. Yea, not an easy job to get it started! I pulled a couple of times and then pushed the gas thing, and then pulled some more. I thought to myself pretty bad things and kept trying.  But eventually it started and off to the front of the house I went. My plan was to get the front lawn mowed and then mow the other ditch and do some trim work in the other ditch. OK, I got the front of the house done and it was looking pretty good. Then moving to the snake ditch. I’ve found so many snakes in this ditch this summer it’s crazy, but it was so stinking windy and getting late, I thought to myself.. I double dare any snake to come out tonight. It’ll for sure be their last. (pretty tough huh!) Well no snakes came out and I got the ditch mowed. Now I’m sure that the people driving by thought I was so snotty because I never looked up and waved to them. But honestly if I did that, I would have spent the whole night just waving by the road and not getting any mowing done. OK, now I moved over to the other ditch and was getting pretty tired of walking behind the mower. But I knew that it was my only choice and soon that ditch was also done. So as I was pushing the mower through the yard I saw the lawn by the road was  looking kind of sad and I remember thinking – just how long could this actually take?  Well, that was a dumb move. Because it took a very long time. It took so long that it was dark outside when I was mowing,  and I was just king of guessing where the rows were because I couldn’t see anymore. We have a requirement on our rider lawnmower that it has to have lights because I’m usually mowing late at night, but now I think that we’ll have this requirement on the push mower also. Then I thought that maybe I need one of those miner hats with a light on it. OK, maybe not. I looked way too unattractive the way it is to start with out there covered in dirt, that I better not add to it. So after all of this going on tonight, I decided that I got in a couple hours of walking behind the push mower and who in the world needs to go for a run when you can do this?