Yardwork SUCKS

That about sums it up for me. I got some raking done. Before I did that, though, I had to run to our small grocery store to get some garbage bags for the leaves. I bought the biggest bags they had - 33 gallons.

However, those proved to be pitifully too small.

So what to do with the leaves already raked up? I crammed them into our large garbage can. They'll have to wait until I can brave Walmart (hey, it'll be worth it, Legos just came out with the new Indian Jones sets for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It can't be all work and no play.) and grab some decent bags.

On top of that, our plastic rake broke. I noticed the teeth gradually began to break off. After 20 minutes the rake was ruined.

Then I turned my attention to trimming the trees on the burm (not sure if that's spelled right. It's the chunk of lawn between the street and sidewalk). They have this black fungus growing on the branches.

Soon, though, I realized after about ten minutes of trimming that they damned tree was going to be limbless if I didn't stop.

So I hauled the branches to the backyard and stacked them there.

Defeated, I headed to the house.

Now I can get some real work done - reading and writing.

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One reason I am not handy whatsoever is that I simply never paid attention whenever Dad would drag me along on one of his adventures.

Instead of watching him replace the starter on the pick up, I'd stand idly by handing him the wrong tools while I thought up stories in my head or analyzed who the Bengals were going to draft.

That was the way of my youth. I never paid attention. I was miles away in my head.

This was especially true when we baled hay. Dad would sit on the tractor carefully examining the swath as the baler gobbled it up. I waited for the bales and stacked them when they came out, but I was on autopilot. I was really dreaming up bands or making up song lyrics or story lines for horror stories. I really was a million miles away.

Once after baling, Dad had me drive the tractor in while he adjusted some of the bales on the hay rack. I was so wound up in a daydream that I didn't even notice, when I circled us around to the hay shed, that he had actually jumped off the hay rack and unhooked the trailer. Dad just stood watching me idly putting along on the "A" without a care in the world. I think I made it about 50 yards before I snapped out of it and looked back to see Dad standing there holding the hitch and just shaking his head!

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Now why would anyone want to do yard work when they could read this --




I read this horror story last winter. Stephen King said it was phenomenal. So I found it for free on the internet and printed it out. I read it one night while home alone with the wind howling and the snow coming down. Though it is set in the summer deep in the south, I forgot all about the snow and the cold and was instantly transported to this old house, which appears on the the cover of this comic just like I imagined it in my head. Only there was more of a redish glow to the sky.