This day was not "berry" fun

Nothing good EVER came out of the words:  "All we have to do is...."

Mistake number one was visiting my parents to learn that my 83-year-old mother had just gotten done with push-mowing her own lawn. Great. How was I suppose to sell the "Amy is a delicate flower" scenario when my 5-foot-tall matriarch was busy whacking weeds in the 85 degree heat?

So, that afternoon, I reluctantly agreed to mow less than my fair share of our lawn. I spent an hour and forty minutes alternately sweating & straining, huffing & puffing OR laying prone, in the middle of my yard, wishing for a quick death. Whilst mowing, I noticed something amiss but stoically remained silent. The grass didn't seem tall enough to cut as the whirring blades barely grazed over the tops but if Brad wanted the lawn mowed, by golly, I was going to mow it!

Then...the conversation of nightmares:

Amy: (sprawled on the ground after the mowers had finally been put away)  It didn't seem like my mower was actually mowing anything.

Brad: (Glancing at my less-than-half of the lawn) Did you lower the blade deck?

Amy: (Staring speechless. Horrified)

Has anyone in the world EVER even heard of a frickin' "blade deck?" And, if you have heard of it, do you know HOW to lower it?!?!?

Commiserating later, Sydney asked, "It wasn't even mowing the lawn?!?!?" To which I replied, "I may have trimmed its split ends."

But that's not the end of the story. Oh no. I had made the mistake of explaining to my husband that I refrain from picking the blackberries beneath our pine tree because they are nourished by an ever-present swamp resulting from an unfortunately-placed pipe. "But they are perfectly good," Brad tried to reason before I interrupted him by saying I could not, in good conscience, consume sewer-berries. Brad reminded me of the scene from "The Martian" where Matt Damon manages to inventively grow potatoes. "That movie was fiction," I snarled.

This led to his plan that "we" could re-direct the pipe. As in "now." AFTER I had, hypothetically-speaking, "mowed" less than my fair share of our lawn.

To be fair, I spent a great deal of the digging time sitting on a chair, sipping a cool beverage, and making helpful suggestions. I also kept our daughters apprised of the goings-on.

Me:  Daddy's digging a hole to re-direct the swamp resulting in our sewer-berry patch. He has a pick-ax.

This made me giggle because, after our legendary logging dilemma, I had nicknamed my husband, Paul Not-so-fun-yon. I think I might have been suffering from heat stroke at that time.

Me:  I'm frightened.

Me:  I don't see nachos in my future.

Me:  Maybe grilled cheese.

Sydney:  You need to escape.

I sent her a picture.

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Sydney:  Is that your grave?

Me:  If you don't hear from me again soon...fifteen paces from the newly-planted cherry tree.

Me:  It's getting worse. He got out the concrete cutter and there is a LOT of muttering.

A drill bit had somehow gotten sunk into some buried timber and a LOT of time was now being devoted to extracting it. The romantic in me likened it to The Sword and the Stone. "Did you try wiggling it?" I asked constructively. By this time, a host of power tools now littered my lawn. Shoulders deep into the hole, Brad peered manically out at me. Oh. Wrong literary tale. Forget King Arthur. Brad was Captain Ahab...I was the doomed crew...and that stubborn drill bit was his White Whale. I kissed any hope of a grilled cheese good-bye and glanced towards the shadow of the sewer-berry bush, outlined by the setting sun. How bad could they possibly be?