I sat around yesterday, glad that the rain that threatened off and on was around, it gave me a great excuse to avoid re-ripping my incision/mowing the ditch. Everything was going well until late afternoon, when I saw the sun poke out and illuminate the ditch in all its glorious overgrownedness. In a moment of extreme enthusiasm and lack of clarity, I decide to rush out, grab the push mower, and hurt myself.
The push mower has not been started since before my surgery, sometime in August. Of all the possible scenarios I ran in my mind on how to hurt myself, the one I forgot about was trying to start a push mower. I pulled the cord...and pulled the cord...and pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled my incision...pulled the cord, with each pull I came a little closer to ripping my incision and the mower got no closer to starting. Even though I only have one testicle, I have enough testosterone to realize, if something doesn't work, you can always pour gas in it. Which is exactly what I did, and the mower started right up...in my workshop. But at least I knew that the mower starts. I loaded it up with the lawn tractor, and headed down to the ditch. I brought along my "whacking stick" which I use for chopping limbs (of trees...so far), hacking up rogue snakes (FYI, all snakes are rogue), and using for leverage/stability as I drop the mower off the side of the cliff we call a ditch. I don't know how to describe exactly what this tool is. It's about five feet long, and has a sharp hooked blade, which may have been an old way to harvest corn, or chase teenagers through fields while wearing a white William Shatner mask, or to run after Dr. Frankenstein's monster. Today it was also used as a cane.
I went to the top of the hill over looked the ditch and pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled the cord...pulled a muscle...pulled the cord. Luckily, I brought down a gas can with me so I used the whacking stick as a screwdriver to take off the breather and poured some more gas into the beast. The next pull, she roared to life. I was dreading pushing the mower over the edge, because that meant I had to pull it back up again. I slowly lowered it down, leaning heavily on the whacking stick, the mower started sputtering due to the extreme angle, and I started sputtering due to being fat and lazy for several months. Each pass, I struggled with lowering it down and pulling it up, while jamming the whacking stick in to the ground and using it to help pull the mower back up again. This was working fine, but I forgot one thing about living in the country, people (as in everyone that drives by) wave at you, and it's just not neighborly to not wave back. So in the midst of this delicate balancing act of using one hand to lower the mower down and the other hand death gripping the whacking stick, I have to pause to wave at every car that came by (because they waved at me) and apparently I-70 was shut down and rerouted on our road.
Eventually, I finished the hardest physical part, next I had to mow near the road. When mowing near the road, you not only have to look down for snakes to whack, but you have to be aware of traffic coming from the left and the right, and since we live at a "T" in the road, you also have to look out for traffic coming directly at your back. I know what you are thing, if I am mowing the ditch, why am I worried about traffic on the road? Well, several reasons, farm machinery is wider that your average car, so you have to be wary of it hanging over the side of the road, or cars avoiding oversized farm machinery and hanging over the side of the road, plus I frequently have to back into the road to mow this part, and I also have to mow around all the tire tracks IN OUR DITCH so obviously someone has managed to drive exactly where I am mowing before!
I have several theories as to why people drive in our ditch. Some just misjudge the curve and come around there way too fast. And this particular intersection is a one and a half way stop. There is one regular stop sign, and one "Stop Except When Turning Right" sign (which in every other state is just a "Yield") and the third way you don't have to stop no matter which way you're turning. This leads to confusion and thereby most people treat is as a What-Stop-Sign? intersection, leading to a lot of squealing and swerving around oncoming traffic. There also tend to be a lot of drunks that like to run into the ditch and sometimes for fun, ram the electricity pole. And finally I think a lot of people are just so busy looking for people to wave to that they don't pay attention to where they are going and run off the road.
So here I am, looking down for snakes to whack, looking left, looking right, looking behind me, looking up (because I don't want to be surprised by SEAL Team VI), pushing the mower with one arm, pulling on my whacking stick with the other arm, and waving at anything that moves. I was about three quarters done when I started to feel that familiar "tug" down below. No not my bowels, that was earlier, I am talking about my incision tugging to warn me that it doesn't like what I am doing and it threating to let loose. So, after getting this obvious warning sign, I did what all men would do and decided the best thing to do would be to stop, leave the rest and go in and take it easy. I did, I really did decide that would be the best thing, but I still kept mowing until I finished. It was about this time that my wife and mother-in-law came back from the cemetery, or store, or family Catholic event, or where ever they were and I saw them stop in the driveway way away from where I was mowing and wait to talk to me. Now it was pretty obvious that I was doing something, and it was also pretty obvious that whatever they had been doing previously, they were now sitting in an air conditioned car. Since they were waiting for me to stop what I was doing, walk from the edge of the yard to the driveway (which I estimate is a walk of approximately ten miles, or at least that's what it feels like when you have been mowing, waving, and keeping your insides from spilling out), I once again used my superior Man Reasoning Abilities and decide to ignore them and keep mowing. I finally finished the mowing and much like how a marathon winner will collapse as he/she crosses the finish line with tears of joy running down their face, I fell back on to the lawn tractor and let out a very manly man-whimper.
As soon as I stopped, I could tell that my incision wasn't doing well, and I had planned to just sit on the couch the rest of the night and hold my crotch, something that seemed to make even more sense now that I pulled my incision. Then my wife came down and asked if I would go with her to Wal-mart. For some reason I said "yes". I think I said "yes" because she said we were only going for two things, and I forgot in Wal-mart Speak, two things is actually forty-seven things that we will grab them by alternately criss-crossing the full length of the store approximately eighty-three times. I don't know how the math works out on that, I just know that's what happens.
So, for the rest of last night and all of today, I have been limping around holding my side, like that is actually helping at all, but since that is the only thing I can think to do, I keep doing it. The good news is that I didn't push myself to the "pop" just the tug. So I hope this will all be better soon. And if nothing else, I can use this for leverage next time someone wants me to mow the lawn.
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