You Mean Grass Doesn't Cut Itself??

May 19, 2014

I have to take on more responsibilities now that I don’t have a man in the house to do the “man type” chores (I know, the feminist in me just cringed too). It’s not that I think these are chores that women can’t do, it’s that I personally do not want to do them. Like, at all.

Raking leaves, mowing lawns, putting in window air conditioning units, painting. It’s just not for me. I can barely convince myself to do the chores I have deemed “women's work”. I used to be glad to have a man around to do all these things, even if he hated doing all those chores too. At least we both had chores we hated but had to do. But now it’s all about the “new me” who tries new things and is capable and blah blah blah (insert eye roll here).

So I allowed my dad to come over to mow the postage-stamp sized front yard. But only if he would teach me how to do it so that I could add this to the repertoire of things I CAN do but don’t WANT to do. (it’s a long list that I’m pretty proud of)

One thing you should know about lawn mowers, believe it or not, they should not be left outside all winter. I mean look, cars are left out all year and they have engines and they still work when I want them to so why not a tiny mower? I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either. Needless to say, the mower did not want to start for us. So out comes the old weed wacker, which was not left outside all winter but still did not start (proving my point that a winter with two hundred feet of snow was probably not hurting the lawnmower. In fact, it was probably just agreeing with me that mowing was not a chore meant for me).

I considered getting the shears out and using those but my Dad talked me out of that pretty quickly. I was actually kind of bummed I didn’t get to conquer this chore that I had never wanted to do in the first place. I had visions of singing “I’M EVERY WOMAN! IT’S ALL IN ME!” (much to Whitney’s dismay) as I mowed the 2 inch by 2 inch square that is my front “yard”. And here I would insert a picture of me pointing to my freshly cut grass using an instagram filter that portrayed victory! But no, sometimes you just have to let the grass grow a little longer, a little crazier and just shrug it off.

At our old house, when I was still married, I had a neighbor whose husband left her with 2 young boys. I was so impressed with her ability to get out and mow the lawn, sand and paint the front porch and so much more. At the time I thanked God I wasn’t in that situation rather than realizing how resilient she was. Now I see why I need to learn to do these things on my own. Not for me but for my boys. I want them to see they have a mom that can get shit done….while singing female empowerment ballads. I know it will happen one day soon, and in the meantime I’ll work on my grrrl-power playlist.