Month: June 2017

Mow, mow, mow your yard

I used to have a very simple three-part checklist to go over when purchasing a new lawnmower:

Does it meet my wife’s pre-approved budgetary ceiling?
Does it start after one or two pulls?
Can it roll over any and everything its path — including but not limited to sticks, rocks, toys, lawn furniture and laundry that has fallen off a clothesline — and still keep grinding away?

If the answer was yes to these, consider new mower purchased. And based on number three, that might explain why I purchase lawn mowers slightly more often than most people purchase shoes.

Yes, I am not exactly gentle on my mowers. But after my previous mower’s death, I found it was time to reevaluate things in my life.

My last mower was purchased off of Craig’s List, so while it did not come with a warranty, it did come with the guarantee of hours of anxiety leading up to the sale as I went through the many scenarios in which this transaction would go bad and I would end up in the news as just another one of the Craig’s List Lawn Mower Killer’s victims. “HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE SEEN THIS COMING, MIKE!?!?!?” I said to myself about 30 seconds before getting out and handing a guy some cash in the driveway of his very nice home. (Spoiler alert: He did not kill me.)

This mower was pretty solid for the first few uses. Started quickly. Mowed over whatever was in its path. Seemed to be a pretty solid character.

And then it revealed itself. I had filled up the gas tank prior to cutting the yard. My yard is not that big, so it does not take a whole tank of gas to cut the entire thing. In fact, it maybe takes a quarter of a tank. So when I finished, there was plenty of gas still in the mower.

Fast forward about an hour, and there was not plenty of gas in the mower. There was plenty of gas on the mower. There was plenty of gas around the mower. Even I can determine that is not ideal functionality from a gas tank.

At this point, something in me snapped. I was tired of messing with mowers. (Even if I was often the reason they were breaking.) I was tired of dealing with gasoline. I was tired of having chunks of children’s toys shoot out of the mower at lethal speeds when I run over them in the yard.

So I decided punt my requirements for a mower. I went rogue. When I told my wife my decision, she said, “Really?” Indeed, I had decided I would buy an electric mower. The cheapest one I could find. One that was just probably slightly more powerful than a ceiling fan.

I found one online for under $100. “Remember,” my wife said, “you get what you pay for.” I reminded her that my last purchase cost more and resulted in about three mows and a gas leak. “Fair enough,” she said.

In a few days, my mower arrived. The assembly took roughly four seconds, as it involved snapping the handle onto the base.

There is no cord to pull to start. Rather, you plug it in and push a button, and off it roars. OK, purrs.

It is not going to run over any large objects any time soon. In fact, the first time I used it, it ran up against some rather thick St. Augustine and had to make a few passes to get through it.

And yes, trailing an extension cord did occasionally present a hiccup during the mowing as it decided to get tangled around a wheel or a foot or a nearby tree. Upside – just stop and untangle, and then push the button again and you’re back and running.

And yes, I have to manage my personal expectations of yard manliness (or lack thereof) I am exuding. Sure you can have a conversation at normal tone while the mower is running. That doesn’t make me any less of man.

I have now mowed the yard a few times with it. It takes me a little bit longer than previously, but not by more than a few minutes. And so far, I don’t have to deal with any mechanical issues, and certainly no gas issues.

So I will continue with my adorable little electric mower for the time being. I will clear the path before I mow, and I will deal with the cord as I need to. And I will try and keep this one in good condition and hopefully won’t have to buy another one for a long time. After all, I’ve dodged the Craig’s List Lawn Mower Killer once. No sense in tempting fate a second time.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Mt. Pleasant. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

Childhood Family

COWS! and other parenting tricks

Post author By Mike Gibbons
Post date June 25, 2017
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We were having dinner the other night, and we decided a good topic of conversation would be “The times we tricked you foolish, foolish children.”

OK, so that wasn’t expressly what was stated at the beginning, but the conversation did head that way. My kids are teens now, and we find it fun to look back on when they were little and my wife and I navigated the parenting waters and we maybe used a smidge of literary license to help us get through the day. I am sure other parents can relate. For those of you with young kids or planning on having kids in the future, tuck some of these away for future use.

We were at Disney years ago, and they had a station where you could make and then buy your own Star Wars light saber. My son was about three, and he was very excited about building his own. At the conclusion, I told him, “OK, now put the parts back in their right places so other kids can build them.” I never mentioned that you could actually buy your creations. Dutifully, he put all the parts back, and we didn’t buy one. Lest you think I am awful, remember that this was rather smart savings, as there was roughly a 100 percent chance that the light saber would not have made it out of the store intact.
The ice cream truck went through our neighborhood a good bit. And we USUALLY went out and got a treat. But some days, ice cream is just the last thing we wanted to contend with. “Yeah, I used to turn the TV up so you wouldn’t hear it sometimes,” my wife confessed. Sometimes, the ice cream truck just isn’t in the day’s plans.
We used to live in a very popular Halloween neighborhood. The kids would come home with pounds of candy. They could have eaten nothing but candy until the next Halloween and had plenty left over. After they went to sleep on Halloween, we would get a decent selection for them to have over the next week or so, and the rest would magically disappear, often at our places of employment. One year, we decided to store all of the candy in a bin and just hang onto it until the next Halloween, at which point we could repurpose it for trick or treaters. Fun fact: If you store candy in a bin where squirrels can get to it, you will, a year later, find yourself a bin with nothing but shredded candy wrappers and squirrel droppings.
Never upset cows. We were riding home from a trip, and the kids were starting to squabble in the back seat. As we rode through some rural country land, surrounded on both sides by cow pastures, my wife loudly announced, “KIDS! QUIET! THERE ARE COWS!!!!” Both kids went silent immediately. I glanced at my wife. “Cows?” I mouthed. She shrugged. But they were quiet for the next half hour or so.
We used to have a pool, and we would always sit with the kids when they were swimming. One of our strongest rules: Thunder = no more pool. In the house. Now. There MAY have been a time or two when, as both kids emerged from underwater, I said, “I heard thunder. Everyone inside.” Sometimes, you’ve gotta get homework done.
Turns out, dentists do not require you to come for a wiggly tooth. When my daughter was young, my wife informed her that a tooth that was dangling by a single nasty little thread had to be dealt with, or, per our dentist, we would have to come in for an appointment, that we may have told her was already set. Thank goodness she did not call the bluff and she let my wife deal with the tooth, so we didn’t have to fast track a non-necessary dentist appointment.

Now, I know some of you are perfect people and never stretch the truth to fit your parenting agenda. And congratulations. You’re better than we are. I think our kids have grown up just fine, and I kinda enjoy sharing with them the stories of how we had to creatively parent at times. Hopefully, this will help them when they are parents, and their children are upsetting the cows and the thunder is getting closer.

Childhood Family

Because everyone loves Cleaning Day

Post author By Mike Gibbons
Post date June 2, 2017
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I think we can all agree that the single most fun day a family can celebrate together is Cleaning Day.

Just listen to the shouts of joy from the kids! (Teenagers shouts of joy sound strangely similar to whines and moans.)

Yes, we (and by “we” I mean my wife and I) decided we (and by “we” I mean “my wife and I and the kids even if they came kicking and screaming”) were all going to knock out some housekeeping. My wife and I dutifully informed the kids that they both had a few chores they were going to have to take care of. We informed them of this when we were in a moving car so they had no escape and would have to listen to what their tasks would be.

The chores were fairly simple. Granted, based on their reaction, I think it’s a pretty good thing my kids weren’t born into Little House on the Prairie.

My daughter is 16, and we let her have as much privacy as possible in her room. And as long as the door can shut, we don’t really care too much what her room looks like. But every so often, we are greeted with two options: Good ol’ cleaning overhaul or we cut that section out of the house, move it safely away, and burn it.

She set off on her room cleaning initiative with minimal grumbling. I clean at a rather frenzied pace, so I decided I would let my daughter clean without being near her as she cleans at the speed of a very tired sloth, and it probably wouldn’t be very productive if I kept saying, “CLEAN FASTER!!!”

I did offer to assist by taking down any cups she had in her room. Fun fact: A teenage girl’s room can house well over 1,000 half-full Tervis tumblers.

Our son’s assigned chore was very specifically geared toward him: Clean up the giant tackle box that our front porch had become.

He is an avid fisherman, and he spends as much time when he’s at home at the ponds near our house. He keeps a lot of his fishing gear right at the front door so he can grab his stuff on the go.

Unfortunately, over time the gear gets rather spread out, often occupying the table and chairs on our front porch. My son doesn’t quite get the need for organizing something such as fishing gear on your front porch. He also doesn’t get the need for shoes, showers, shirts or eating off a plate. (We do hope one day to fully domesticate him.)

His first attempt to get out of the chore was to tell me that his tackle box was broken. I pointed at the very much not broken tackle box sitting amidst the lures and hooks and such. He informed me that was his saltwater tackle box. Oh, silly me. How foolish not to know.

Then, in what can only be described as a brilliant Jedi mind trick, we soon found ourselves at the store, picking out a new tackle box for his freshwater stuff. And a new rod. And some bobbers.

Oh, wait it can be described as something else: I’m a sucker.

In short order, he had his new tackle box organized, and the front porch looked far more orderly. He was off fishing in no time. (For what it’s worth, I am sure the order will be maintained for, oh, let’s give it two hours.)

So their onerous workday complete, both kids were able to resume their life of leisure and get back to doing the thing they love most: Not having to clean. Ma and Pa Ingalls would be so proud of their efforts.